A new study reveals that excessive alcohol consumption by men just before conception can negatively influence your child's relationship to drinking. That is, a relationship is established between genetic factors and alcoholism .
The work, carried out by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (USA), aimed to test the hypothesis that alcohol consumption and neurobiological sensitivity to it were influenced by previous exposure to alcohol . To do this, they regularly exposed male mice to ethanol vapor for a period of five weeks, which led to slightly higher blood alcohol levels than the legal limit for human driving.
After this, the mice mated with females that had not been exposed to alcohol. Once the mice had offspring, the researchers discovered that the male offspring of these mice were highly susceptible to its effects , but the female offspring were not. Thus, these mice were more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol in terms of body control and anxiety.
"It is suspected that the offspring of mice exposed to alcohol would obtain improved taste sensitivity to alcohol, which appears to be the pattern for humans. But why female offspring does not seem to be affected is a mystery at the moment, "says Andrey Finegersh, study leader.
The work has been published in the magazine Plos One .
