14 DAY TRIAL // You drink like a pig and smoke like a sailor? In this case, it is hard to imagine what type of kids you will have (if you will have). Sperm mutations due to exposure to environmental toxins can be transmitted along the generations, as showed by a research presented at American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Experiments made on rats revealed that sperm mutations induced by exposure to pesticides were found in the subsequent fourth generation of rats. In the end, how "clean" is the father does count much more than previously imagined.
The team at the University of Idaho in Moscow, US, exposed embryonic rats to the hormone-disrupting fungicide vinclozolin. The pesticide caused mutations in sperm genes, including those connected to human prostate cancer. The male rats exposed to the toxin experienced during the lifespan damage and overgrowth of the prostate, sterility and kidney issues, and these problems were still present in the fourth generation of rats.
The team said the animals had been exposed to very large amounts of vinclozolin, but the experiments clearly showed that, once occurred, sperm mutations were transmitted along the generations.
"Men who drank a lot of alcohol had been shown to have increased rates of sperm defects; and nicotine from tobacco found its way into seminal fluid as well as blood. We need to open up our eyes and look at the evidence. My advice to young couples would be moderation. Substances that have an impact on reproduction are often also carcinogenic. If I was a young man I would not drink very heavily and not smoke two packets of cigarettes a day while I was trying to conceive a child," said Professor Cynthia Daniels, from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
"The DNA in sperm cells is more tightly packed than in other cells, and so, to some extent, is protected from damage. However, once sperm cell DNA is damaged, it has no mechanism by which to effect repairs. There is no doubt that if you smoke like a chimney or drink vast amounts of alcohol it will result in sperm damage, and probably damage in the DNA of the sperm. My advice to any man trying for a baby would be to lead as healthy a lifestyle as possible," Professor Neil McClure, a fertility expert at Queen's University Belfast, UK, told BBC News.