Transgenerational effects of childhood conditions on third generation health and education outcomes

Abstract

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Phone: +49-621-181-1923; Fax: +49-228-73-9239. AbstractThis paper examines the extent to which pre-puberty nutritional conditions in one generation affect productivity-related outcomes in later generations. Recent findings from the biological literature suggest that the so-called slow growth period around age 9 is a sensitive period for male germ cell development. We build on this evidence and investigate whether undernutrition at those ages transmits to children and grandchildren. Our findings indicate that third generation males (females) tend to have higher mental health scores if their paternal grandfather (maternal grandmother) was exposed to a famine during the slow growth period. These effects appear to reflect biological responses to adaptive expectations about scarcity in the environment, and as such they can be seen as an economic correctional mechanism in evolution, with marked socio-economic implications for the offspring.

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.…”

“…When the paternal grandfather had been exposed to famine, the grandson exhibited DMRs of insulin processing. When the paternal grandmother had been exposed the granddaughter had DMRs of GOs related to environmental stress such as “hypothalamus developmenť(influencing the HPA-axis) related to increased female susceptibility to stress, yet explaining the benefit to mental health recently found in a different setting 7 .…”

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

“…Firstly, food access for six ancestors was examined in three small birth cohorts, where family ties were interwoven and rather complex. This has given rise to the concern that a multitude of comparisons have produced random or biased findings 25 , 26 . Secondly, since crop failures and very abundant harvests were rather infrequent, exposure to a nutritional shock during pre-puberty implies that individuals were born in particular years, leaving room for confounding due to birth cohort effects.…”

Early-Onset Paternal Smoking and Offspring Adiposity: Further Investigation of a Potential Intergenerational Effect Using the HUNT Study

“…Tobacco smoke in particular leads to many epigenetic modifications, such as the hypermethylation of tumour suppressor genes in non-transformed lung cells [28] [29]. That epigenetic modifications may occur during paternal preadolescence is equally plausible, as the age of preadolescence, (also sometimes called the slow growth period) was found to be a critical period in several related contexts [30] [31] [32]. Epigenetic modifications to the male germ line that alter the metabolism of the next generation are thus plausible, although there are many other possible links through which epigenetic changes may affect obesity and vice versa [11] [33].…”