Mothers are given maximum attention. But research shows that a father’s diet before conception can play an equally important role in the health of the offspring. New research shows for the first time that paternal folate levels are just as important for the development and health of offspring as they are for the mother.
Researcher McGill suggests that fathers should pay as much attention to their lifestyle and diet before conception as mothers. There are concerns about the long-term effects of current Western diets and food insecurity.
The research focused on vitamin B 9, which is also called folic acid. It is found in green leafy vegetables, cereals, fruits and meats. It is well known that in order to prevent miscarriages and birth defects, mothers need to get enough folic acid. Almost no attention has been paid to how a father’s diet can affect the health and development of offspring.
“Despite the fact that folic acid is now added to various foods, future fathers who eat high-fat foods, eat fast food, or are obese are unable to absorb and use folic acid properly,” say scientists from Kimmins Research Group. “People who live in northern Canada or other food insecure parts of the world may also be particularly at risk of folic acid deficiency. And now it became known that this can have very serious consequences for the embryo.
The researchers reached this conclusion by working with mice and comparing the offspring of fathers with dietary folic acid deficiency with the offspring of fathers whose diets contained adequate amounts of the vitamin. They found that paternal folic acid deficiency was associated with an increase in birth defects of various kinds in his offspring, compared to the offspring of male mice fed adequate amounts of folic acid.
“We were very surprised to find an almost 30 percent increase in birth defects in the litter of males whose folate levels were deficient,” said Dr. Roman Lambrot, one of the scientists involved in the study. “We saw some pretty serious skeletal anomalies that included both craniofacial defects and spinal deformities.”
A study by the Kimmins group shows that there are parts of the sperm epigenome that are sensitive to lifestyle and diet in particular. And this information is reflected in the so-called epigenomic map, which affects the development of the embryo, and can also affect the metabolism and development of diseases in the offspring in the long term.
The epigenome can be compared to a switch that depends on signals from the environment and is also involved in the development of many diseases, including cancer and diabetes. It was known before that the processes of erasure and repair occur in the epigenome as sperm develop. A new study shows that along with a developmental map, sperm also carries a memory of the father’s environment, diet and lifestyle.
“Our research shows that fathers need to think about what they put in their mouths, what they smoke and what they drink, and remember that they are generational guardians,” Kimmins concludes. “If all goes as we hope, our next step will be to work with the staff of the reproductive technology clinic and study how lifestyle, nutrition and overweight men affect the health of their children.”