TheParental stress could be passed on to the children before they are born, according to a new study published in the journalBiological Psychiatry. “Heredity is complex. Mothers and fathers are known to have a tremendous influence on their children, but this study highlights the difficulty of the relationship between genetic and epigenetic contributions – changes in gene expression that are not caused by changes in DNA-sequencing, and the environment in regards to the inheritance of important behavioral traits, “comments the magazine’s editor, John Krystal, in view of the results.
Most of the work to date has focused on maternal effects, but this new study has looked at paternal effects and found thatmale mice exposed to chronic stress transmit stress behaviors to their offspring. So much so that a male and female mouse showed increased symptoms of depression and anxiety, although the effects were stronger in males.
“Importantly, these behavioral changes were only present in offspring produced through natural reproduction, and not in offspring that were produced by ‘in vitro’ fertilization,” says Eric Nestler, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. from New York (United States). According to the authors, the finding reveals that vulnerability to stress is passed on to later generations through behavior more than they thought. Now they propose to do new studies in humans.
