THE AUTISM/EARLY CHILDHOOD SCHIZOPHRENIA EPIDEMIC IS NOT MYSTERIOUS OR UNEXPECTED

How many men in the US have been fathering babies at 33-35 and up? There has been a huge rise in the number of men fathering babies in their mid to late 30s, in their 40s, in their 50s. The epidemics of genetic disorders such as autism are not a surprise and will get worse until we change the age the men father babies and/or cryobank sperm in their mid 20s-30ish.





Paternal age and schizophrenia

Proportional hazards regression analyses, with adjustment for a range of confounding factors described later, showed strong association between risk of schizophrenia and advancing paternal age (3). The hazards ratios were 2.32 (95% CI: 1.56, 3.44) for males and females whose fathers were 35–39 years old at time of conception, 2.08 (95% CI: 1.25, 3.46) for those whose fathers were 40–44 years old, 1.30 (95% CI: 0.56, 3.06) for those whose fathers were 45–49 years old, and 4.62 (95% CI: 2.28; 9.36) for those whose fathers were 50 years old at time of conception. The reference group comprised study subjects whose fathers were 21–24 years old at their conception. Factors taken into account in the analyses were sex, age, maternal age and parity, birth weight, birth length, gestational age, urban vs rural status of place of birth, season of birth, Apgar score at 1 and 5 min after birth, multiple birth, parental death in childhood, family history of schizophrenia, and highest annual income of either parent, highest socioeconomic index of either parent, and highest educational level of either parent.


Paternal age and schizophrenia

Increased paternal age is associated with several diseases possibly due to age-associated increase in sporadic de novo mutations in male germ cells (3). The Swedish study showed a strong positive association of paternal age at conception with risk of schizophrenia in young adulthood (3) and confirms previous smaller studies of schizophrenia (26, 27). The paternal age–schizophrenia association is stronger in those with no family history of schizophrenia, supporting the hypothesis that accumulating de novo mutations in the germ cells of older fathers could play an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia (3).

Genes coding for IGF-I are especially interesting because IGF-I seems to have a role in shaping synaptic connections or myelinization (2, 21, 25).



Footnotes

This paper was presented at the 4th Ferring Pharmaceuticals International Paediatric Endocrinology Symposium, Paris (2006). Ferring Pharmaceuticals has supported the publication of these proceedings


Ferring Pharmaceuticals has products to treat infertility so one cannot believe that they do not know of the association between increasing paternal age and schizophrenia/autism