Mother's Age Not Responsible for the Increase in Autism, No Matter What Dr. Wigler Says to the Press

By paternal age 35 there is a statistically significant greater risk of all genetic disease in offspring. Even after paternal age age 33 all kinds of problems show up including the ageing disease progeria.

Paternal ages below or above 35 years old are associated with a different risk of schizophrenia in the offspring.
[My paper] M Wohl , P Gorwood
BACKGROUND: A link between older age of fatherhood and an increased risk of schizophrenia was detected in 1958. Since then, 10 studies attempted to replicate this result with different methods, on samples with different origins, using different age classes. Defining a cut-off at which the risk is significantly increased in the offspring could have an important impact on public health. METHODS: A meta-analysis (Meta Win((R))) was performed, assessing the mean effect size for each age class, taking into account the difference in age class references, and the study design. RESULTS: An increased risk is detected when paternal age is below 20 (compared to 20-24), over 35 (compared to below 35), 39 (compared to less than 30), and 54 years old (compared to less than 25). Interestingly, 35 years appears nevertheless to be the lowest cut-off where the OR is always above 1, whatever the age class reference, and the smallest value where offspring of fathers below or above this age have a significantly different risk of schizophrenia. CONCLUSION: No threshold can be precisely defined, but convergent elements indicate ages below or above 35 years. Using homogeneous age ranges in future studies could help to clarify a precise threshold.

RESULTS: There was a significant monotonic association between advancing paternal age and risk of ASD. Offspring of men 40 years or older were 5.75 times (95% confidence interval, 2.65-12.46; P<.001) more likely to have ASD compared with offspring of men younger than 30 years, after controlling for year of birth, socioeconomic status, and maternal age. Advancing maternal age showed no association with ASD after adjusting for paternal age. Sensitivity analyses indicated that these findings were not the result of bias due to missing data on maternal age. CONCLUSIONS: Advanced paternal age was associated with increased risk of ASD. Possible biological mechanisms include de novo mutations associated with advancing age or alterations in genetic imprinting.
PMID: 16953005 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]









The average paternal age in the Western Countries is increasing, and the public health implications of this trend have not been widely anticipated or debated.



Accumultion of chromosomal abberrations and mutations of genes during the maturation of sperm/ male germ cells are associated with conditions such as birth defects, cancers, schizophrenia, autoimmune disorders, autism, Alzheimer's. Breast, prostate, nervous system cancers all increase with rising paternal age as does MS, and type 1 diabetes.



There is a growing literature on the effects for offspring of advancing Paternal Age.


"New point mutations in humans are introduced through the male line," says Dolores Malaspina, MD, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Furthermore, she adds, the number of mutations in sperm increases as men age. "This has been known since the 50s," said Malaspina. "What is intriguing is why society chooses to ignore this."


"it is well established that paternal age is the major source of de novo mutations in the human population" Dolores Malaspina









Somehow Dr. Wigler comes up with this statement which is not true at all. It is not true that almost all cases of (spontaneous mutations) happen in the mother and are tra.nsmitted by the mother. This is blatantly not true and quite bizarre.

Dr. Wigler's statement.



"Almost all cases [of spontaneous mutations] happen in the mother and are transmitted by the mother," he said, adding that the trait for Down is transmitted at the moment of conception. The trait is not hereditary in the same sense a "disease gene" is transmitted from one generation to the next.
As people age, their genes increasingly acquire mutations that are not fixed through DNA repair mechanisms. That's why a spontaneous strike can lead to Down syndrome. And that is also why autism can similarly occur through CNVs, Dr. Wigler said.
"The older the mother, the more likely she has acquired spontaneous mutations" in her chromosomes, and will transmit them at conception, Dr. Wigler said. Less frequently, but just as likely, Dr. Wigler said, fathers can transmit autism traits as well"





The science however says that mutations in the male germ line are vastly predominant in causing problems for offspring. Even Down syndrome has been found to be 50% caused by the age of the father. In schizophrenia which is related closely to autism because childhood schizophrenia is now called autism. There have been no failures to replicate the paternal age effect, nor its approximate magnitude, in any adequately powered study.