Paternal grandfather’s access to food predicts all-cause and cancer mortality in grandsons

Abstract

Studies of animals and plants suggest that nutritional conditions in one generation may affect phenotypic characteristics in subsequent generations. A small number of human studies claim to show that pre-pubertal nutritional experience trigger a sex-specific transgenerational response along the male line. A single historical dataset, the Överkalix cohorts in northern Sweden, is often quoted as evidence. To test this hypothesis on an almost 40 times larger dataset we collect harvest data during the pre-pubertal period of grandparents (G0, n = 9,039) to examine its potential association with mortality in children (G1, n = 7,280) and grandchildren (G2, n = 11,561) in the Uppsala Multigeneration Study. We find support for the main Överkalix finding: paternal grandfather’s food access in pre-puberty predicts his male, but not female, grandchildren’s all-cause mortality. In our study, cancer mortality contributes strongly to this pattern. We are unable to reproduce previous results for diabetes and cardiovascular mortality.

Paternal grandparental exposure to crop failure or surfeit during a childhood slow growth period: Epigenetic marks on grandchildren’s growth, glucoregulatory and stress genes

“…Data emanated from detailed archival records enabling correlations between demographic and crop yield statistics 1–6 . Our finding of SGP sensitivity findings have been replicated in Germany and Sweden 7,8 . Our current paper adds mechanistic information based on blood sampling of seven 75-year-old grandchildren and one 63 years old, enabling determination of candidate epigenetic markers reflecting differential methylation in gene pathways posited to be affected by exposure of their grandparents to crop failure versus bountiful harvest during the grandparental childhood SGP preceding the prepubertal peak stature growth.…”

Intolerance of loud sounds in childhood: Is there an intergenerational association with grandmaternal smoking in pregnancy?

“…Human studies have defined 'exposure-sensitive periods' during early development; namely fetal life and mid-childhood just before puberty. These exposure times are broadly supported by responses to swings in F0 food supply [17,19,33,45,46] or F0 smoking [21,47,48,49]. However, some F0 pre-conceptional exposures in (early) adulthood can also be associated with phenotypic changes in the next generation [21].…”

Wartime health shocks and the postwar socioeconomic status and mortality of union army veterans and their children

“…There is evidence from intergenerational and multigenerational data consistent with epigenetic transmission of health in cases of extreme maternal, paternal, and grandparental over-and under-feeding (e.g. Kaati et al 2007;Heijmans et al 2008;Vågerö et al 2018;Costa et al 2018). Economic theory points to a role for the transmission of parental health through socioeconomic channels.…”