Dad's Life Stress Exposure Leaves Mark On Sperm, Can Affect Offspring Brain Development
Source: Science Daily
Sperm doesn't appear to forget anything. Stress felt by dad -- whether as a preadolescent or adult -- leaves a lasting impression on his sperm that gives sons and daughters a blunted reaction to stress, a response linked to several mental disorders. The findings, published in a new preclinical study in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, point to a never-before-seen epigenetic link to stress-related diseases such as anxiety and depression passed from father to child.
While environmental challenges, like diet, drug abuse, and chronic stress, felt by mothers during pregnancy have been shown to affect offspring neurodevelopment and increase the risk for certain diseases, dad's influence on his children are less well understood. The effects of lifelong exposures to dad on children are even more out of reach.
Now, a team of researchers led by Tracy L. Bale, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and the School of Veterinary Medicine Department of Animal Biology, have shown that stress on preadolescent and adult male mice induced an epigenetic mark in their sperm that reprogrammed their offspring's hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a region of the brain that governs responses to stress. Surprisingly, both male and female offspring had abnormally low reactivity to stress.
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"It didn't matter if dads were going through puberty or in adulthood when stressed before they mated. We've shown here for the first time that stress can produce long-term changes to sperm that reprogram the offspring HPA stress axis regulation," said Bale. "These findings suggest one way in which paternal-stress exposure may be linked to such neuropsychiatric diseases."
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Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130612132656.htm
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