The Role of Fathers

I've dedicated a reasonable portion of this blog to talking about the importance of Mom's health when she is pregnant.  Mom has the ability to make life-long impressions on the child's health depending on her health during pregnancy.   Mom's health can directly influence her child's susceptibility to diabetes, obesity & heart disease even as an adult.    But recent developments suggest that even dads have the potential for life-long influence over his child's health.

A paper published in Nature is titled, "Chronic high fat diet in fathers programs beta cell dysfunction in female rat offspring."  Researchers fed a group of male rats a high fat diet and made them obese.  These male rats impregnated normal weight, healthy female rats.  The female offspring had early signs of diabetes by the time they reached puberty.  And their beta cells (insulin secreting cells of the pancreas) actually had a distinctive gene expression compared to their healthy counterparts.

The researchers believe that the sperm of male rats changes with obesity. They believe there are epigenetic markings around the DNA of the sperm that influence the development of that child.  It should come as no great surprise when you understand the general principles of cell biology and epigenetics.  This will be welcome news to women trying to get healthy for the sake of their future children.  Now- dads have every reason to be on board with a healthy lifestyle!