DNA plays far greater role in intelligence, UCLA study shows.

Scientists take pictures of math ability in brains
SCIENCE: DNA plays far greater role in intelligence, UCLA study shows.
City News Service
Updated: 03/22/2009 09:20:55 PM PDT


Click photo to enlarge«12»UCLA researchers have used a new type of brain scanner to find the inherited physical characteristics - the very hard-wiring of the brain - that determine a person's degree of intelligence.
And for those who have always suspected that the ability to handle math is a matter of how a person's brain is wired, the new University of California, Los Angeles, study confirms that folk theory. The section of brain used for mathematical computations may be 85 percent reliant on hereditary for the amount of a certain material that facilitates thinking, UCLA scientists said this week.

Neurologists for the first time have been able to look at chemicals that wrap around the brain's axons, which are the wiring that sends signals through the brain. The faster the signaling, the faster the brain processes information, UCLA researchers said.

And since the integrity of the brain's wiring is influenced by genes, the DNA we inherit plays a far greater role in intelligence than previously thought, said UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson. Genes determine how much insulation, in the form of myelin, is wrapped around brain axons allowing for fast signaling bursts in our brain, and therefore, greater intelligence.

The thicker the myelin, the faster the nerve impulses, and the greater degree of intelligence, Thompson said.

Various parts of the brain are responsible for different thought processes and those areas have differing amounts of the myelin that is regulated by heredity, the researchers found. The amount of myelin in the section of the brain used heavily for mathematical calculations, for example, indicates that mathematical ability may be 85 percent hereditary.
The brain lobes that handle vision may be 76 percent reliant on genetic factors, and the lobe that handles planning, inhibition and self-control may be 65 percent reliant on genetic influence.

Capability for learning and memory was calculated at only 45 percent on genetic factors.

The UCLA neurologist believes identifying the genes that promote high-integrity myelin is critical to forestalling brain diseases like multiple sclerosis and autism, which have been linked to the breakdown of myelin.

"The whole point of this research is to give us insight into brain diseases," Thompson said. Thompson and his colleagues scanned the brains of 23 sets of twins and 23 sets of fraternal twins because identical twins share the same genes while fraternal twins share about half.

Researchers were able to compare each group to show that myelin integrity was determined genetically in many parts of the brain that are key for intelligence. These include the parietal lobes, which are responsible for spatial reasoning, visual processing and logic, and the corpus callosum, which pulls together information for both sides of the brain.

During research, they used a high-angular resolution diffusion imaging scanner that examines the brain at a much high resolution that a standard MRI. While an MRI shows the volume of different tissues in the brain by measuring the amount of water present, HARDI tracks how water diffuses through the brain's white matter - a way to measure the quality of myelin.

"HARDI measures water diffusion," Thompson said. "If the water diffuses rapidly in a specific direction, it tells us that the brain has very connections. If it diffuses more broadly, that's an indication of slower signaling, and lower intelligence. So it (HARDI) gives us a picture of one's mental speed."

That said, the perfect compromise would be to try to complete your family before both partners reach the age of 35

March 23, 2009

Do older men have less intelligent children?
New research suggests the older your father is when you are born, the lower your IQ, so how late is too late?Dr Mark Porter
New research suggesting that the age of your father influences your IQ - the older he was when you were born, the worse you are likely to fare when tested - is the latest addition to growing evidence that it is not just maternal age that matters when it comes to starting a family. The longer a couple delay, the poorer the outcome for all concerned. But how late is too late?

Back in the early Nineties, about a quarter of children were fathered by men over the age of 35; today it is closer to half, at least for married couples, who still account for the majority (just) of children born in the UK, with the average first-time mother and father now being aged 30 and 32 respectively.

There are lots of reasons why couples are waiting longer, but career and financial pressures feature highly - a trend likely to have been exacerbated by the current economic climate. But while there are obvious benefits to having more mature parents, these have to be offset against the medical implications - and there are many.

For women the main hurdle is declining fertility. While it is technically possible to conceive naturally right up until your last period, female fertility wanes dramatically after the age of 35, and by the time most women reach their late forties they are technically infertile.

Related Links
Biological clock strikes for men too - at 35
Children of older fathers at risk of autism
The problems of being an older mum
A healthy couple in their twenties have a 25 to 30 per cent chance of conceiving each month. This falls to between 10 and 25 per cent when the woman is in her mid-thirties, and has plummeted to less than 5 per cent by the time she is in her early forties. What's more, nearly half of those who do manage to conceive at this age will miscarry within the first three months.

Much of this decline is due to genetic damage inflicted on a woman's eggs by a combination of environmental factors, such as toxins in the diet and natural background radiation. Women are born with a finite supply of eggs, and a 40-year-old egg is harder to fertilise and nurture than a 20-year-old one.

Tradition has it that advancing years do not have such a detrimental effect on men, who, unlike women, manufacture fresh sperm throughout their lives. But they are not actually manufactured from scratch, and the basic template that matures into a fully grown sperm is, like a woman's eggs, as old as the man - so male fertility wanes, too.

The fall starts to become significant when a man reaches his early forties, meaning that it takes longer to conceive, irrespective of the age of the would-be mother. When they are successful, the woman is also more likely to miscarry if her partner is over 40.

The effect of age on the risk of congenital abnormalities appears to be shared between the parents, too. The best known example in women is the link with Down's syndrome. If a woman is in her late twenties, the risk of her child having Down's is about 1 in 1,000. By the age of 35 it increases to 1 in 270, and by 40 it is closer to 1 in 100.

But less marked genetic mutations are thought to be a problem in older fathers as well, and the implications can be just as serious. Children born to men aged over 35 are more likely to have a cleft lip or palate, congenital heart defects, and to develop some forms of cancer, including leukaemia (a 50 per cent increase) and brain tumours (25 per cent increase).

There is also evidence of a link between paternal age and the chances of a child going on to develop autism, dyslexia or schizophrenia - the link with the last of these being particularly strong. Experts estimate that the trend towards delayed fatherhood could account for as many as 10 per cent of new cases of schizophrenia diagnosed each year.

But let's not be overly pessimistic. Torture statistics enough and they will tell you anything. In fact, the vast majority of older mums and dads will have trouble-free pregnancies and perfectly healthy children. Leaving it later may increase the risk of a range of complications - but a 50 per cent increase on a tiny risk is still only a tiny risk. And the medical implications need to be offset against the social and emotional benefits of bringing up a child in a more stable environment.

That said, the perfect compromise would be to try to complete your family before both partners reach the age of 35. It's a feat that my parents managed with ease - they were just 20 and 21 when they had me, which, statistically, means that I will probably live for ever.

Autism Rates Rocket - 1 in 48 British Boys - Cambridge Study

Autism Rates Rocket - 1 in 48 British Boys - Cambridge Study

Older fathers raise babies' health risks

Biological clock ticks for men, too, studies say
Older fathers raise babies' health risks
By Michael Stroh
From The Baltimore Sun
September 10, 2006
A flurry of new genetic and epidemiological studies is chipping away at a prized male
myth: Sperm, it turns out, don't age as well as some men imagine.
At least 20 exceedingly rare but potentially devastating genetic disorders, including
dwarfism and other skeletal deformities, have now been linked to older fathers. Men
who have families later in life also have a higher risk of fathering children with
schizophrenia, studies show. And in the latest reality check, researchers reported last
week that men over 40 are nearly six times as likely to have an autistic child as
those under 30.
"The conventional wisdom is clearly inaccurate: Men have as important a biological
clock as women for having healthy babies," says Dr. Dolores Malaspina of Columbia
University, one of several researchers of this "paternal age" effect.
Despite the gloomy statistics, scientists stress that the vast majority of children born
to men of all ages are healthy, and that the deterioration of sperm over time isn't
nearly as precipitous as that of a woman's eggs. Down syndrome, for example,
occurs in fewer than 1 in 1,000 births to women under 30. At 35, the risk jumps to 1
in 400. By 50, it's 1 in 6.
"In this regard, God was sexist," says Terry Hassold of Washington State University,
an authority on chromosome defects in human sex cells. "There's no question that
females have a much higher risk of chromosomal aberrations as they age."
But it's also clear that more men are putting off first-time parenthood - or, in some
cases, fathering new broods with younger spouses. Since 1980, U.S. birth rates have
shot up as much as 40 percent for men ages 35 to 49. Meanwhile, they have
decreased up to 20 percent for men under 30, according to the National Center for
Health Statistics. As a result, some scientists say, it's important that men understand
there are more potential consequences to becoming a latter-day dad than fertility
troubles.
"I would not discourage an older man from having children any more than I would
discourage an older woman from having children," says Malaspina, whose research
was the first to show a link between paternal age and schizophrenia. "But we must
understand that the optimum ages for having children are in younger adulthood for
both sexes."
Clues that parental age might play a role in disease were first noted nearly a century
ago. In 1912, a German obstetrician named Wilhelm Weinberg realized that
achondroplasia, an inherited form of dwarfism, was more common in the youngest
children of large families than their older siblings. Even in the early days of genetics,
Weinberg was able to deduce why: A child's chances of having the disease grew as
parents aged.
In 1955, British geneticist Lionel Penrose pinned the condition to aging fathers and,
specifically, to gene mutations within their sperm. The find ignited a hunt for other
paternally influenced conditions. In time, researchers identified Apert syndrome,
Marfan syndrome and more than a dozen other rare genetic diseases. One lingering
mystery is how aging alters sperm DNA. It has been only in the past few years that
scientists have developed the sophisticated genetic tools required to probe male sex
cells.
What they're finding isn't always pretty. When researchers at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California examined sperm collected from healthy
men ages 22 to 80, they found a steady increase in the number of broken DNA
strands and other genetic rubble within cells as they age. The report, published this
summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that men in
their 40s generally had twice as much DNA damage as men in their 20s.
Surprisingly, none of this DNA damage was obvious from the sperm's appearance or
behavior, says biophysicist Andrew Wyrobek, who led the study.
Among the potential consequences of DNA damage are fertility problems and
miscarriage. Last month, researchers at Columbia University reported that women
whose partners are 35 and older tend to suffer more pregnancy losses than women
with younger partners. Concerned over genetic damage and its potential health
effects, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends that sperm
banks around the country set the cutoff age for donors at 40.
Scientists still don't know precisely why the DNA gets fouled up in the sperm of older
men - and how this damage leads to disease. One popular explanation is the "copy
error" hypothesis: The cellular machinery that packages DNA inside the sperm slips
up over time, allowing errors to creep in. Sperm, after all, are churned out from
puberty through old age.
Starting at puberty, cells in the testes that give rise to sperm divide every 16 days.
By age 30, they have split 380 times. By 50, the number has climbed to 840. Each
division, scientists say, boosts the chance of error. A woman's ovaries, on the other
hand, are stocked just once before birth. This supply, roughly 400,000 eggs at
puberty, gradually dwindles until she reaches menopause, typically around her 50th
birthday.
Epidemiologists, meanwhile, are trying to tease out the link between paternal age
and disease by studying birth certificates and medical records. In the latest effort,
Abraham Reichenberg of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and his
colleagues studied government medical records of more than 378,000 Israelis born
in the 1980s and found that paternal age was an important risk factor for autism, a
condition marked by poor language and social skills. Reichenberg and his team are
commencing a hunt for specific genes in older men and their autistic offspring that
might account for the disease. The study was reported this month in the Archives of
General Psychiatry . Scientists caution that autism, schizophrenia and other
behavioral conditions linked to paternal age in recent years are complex and most
likely influenced by other factors as well. As a result, physicians remain divided on
just how much weight to give the notion of a male biological clock.
Dr. Eugene Katz, director of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center Fertility Center,
said that the new studies on paternal age and health haven't changed the way he
counsels patients - nor do any men seem worried enough to ask. "If age does play a
role," he says, "it's a much subtler role that occurs over a much longer period of time
than in women."
Dr. Karen Boyle, a male infertility specialist at the Johns Hopkins' Brady Urological
Institute, adds, "I don't think clinically we've been really sensitive to age as an issue
for men. We're just starting to think about men as a contributor to genetic disease."
Ultimately, researchers say, they hope to develop easier tests to probe sperm for
disease, much the way physicians use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to test
embryos.
"There are couples who don't want anything but the perfect child," says Dr. Ethylin
W. Jabs of the Johns Hopkins' Institute of Genetic Medicine. "Even if the risk is one in
a billion, they would take the test."

This Old Sperm

This Old Sperm
Science comes down on the side of the cougar.
By Emily Nussbaum
Published Mar 15, 2009
Earlier this month, the journal PLoS Medicine analyzed data from a study of over 50,000 pregnant women and came to a simple but stunning conclusion: Older fathers have dumber kids. The more geriatric the dad, the dimmer the progeny, on measures including “thinking and reasoning, concentration, memory, understanding, speaking, and reading.” (Luckily, geezer offspring had no problems with motor skills, making them ideal for wheeling around their elderly dads.)
It was another unsettling addition to the growing pile of evidence that men have their own biological clocks, with older fathers also producing higher rates of schizophrenia and autism. But what really caught my eye was the secondary finding, which was that older mothers were associated with smarter children. I quickly did the calculations and was pleased with my findings. The most intelligent children, I deduced, must be the outcome of 45-year-old career women inseminated by their 21-year-old personal trainers....

The longer adults put off starting a family, the greater a child's risk of Down syndrome, schizophrenia and autism, new research suggests

Today's adults 'going against the trend of having children early' 16 Mar 2009
The longer adults put off starting a family, the greater a child's risk of Down syndrome, schizophrenia and autism, new research suggests. In response to recent findings linking paternal age to impaired neurocognitive outcomes in childhood, experts have highlighted that leaving parenthood until later in life increases the likelihood of a range of disorders in infancy. The study, published in the journal PLoS Medicine, linked advanced paternal age with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as dyslexia and reduced intelligence. Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "[It is] another piece of evidence which might suggest that men should have their children earlier than we perhaps are doing these days."Nature intended us to have our children early and we are going against that trend." "By the time a man is in his 40s, the cells producing sperm have done over 800 cycles producing sperm and they are getting a bit tired by then," Dr Pacey explained. According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, around half of childless women in their 30s who intended to start a family managed to do so in the subsequent six years.Discuss this item in our forums

Chloramine Causes Collateral Health Damage

Chloramine Causes Collateral Health Damage
By Dr. Winn Parker

Chloramine is a toxin added to drinking water. It is a secondary disinfectant used by many States as a primary disinfectant. Chloramine is ammonia added to chlorine to make chloramine. Chlorine has been shown from animal and human research to cause breast cancer in humans. Listed in the MSDS industrial chemistry book with an “X” and to be used only in an emergency to attempt to destroy liver flukes and Cryptosporidium in humans. Chloramine does not have an antidote and is genotoxic, meaning DNA destruction and is a mutagenic, meaning it causes tissue mutations.

Chloramine cannot be boiled out of the water and can kill fish in hobby tanks.

Hemodialysis patients have a special consideration not to have chloramine in their blood. They could die in minutes. Extensive carbon filters are not an appropriate solution to take the nitrogen out of the ammonia.

Chronic kidney disease causes the organs to slowly lose their ability to filter waste out of the bloodstream. Many of the 20 million estimated to have kidney disease do not know it. Water Utility Districts are asking humans to be a human processing plant for the chooramine in the body. There are presently known 1,500 disinfectant by-products in the drinking water with several know secondary carcinogenic products from the chemistry pathway. Human as a processing plant can bioaccumulate the nitrogen-toxins from an impaired kidney, liver or impaired immune system such as AIDS. The bioaccumulation of amine toxins and secondary cancer products such as Bromides from the chemistry of water toxins are going to accumulate even in various doseage of ammonia to chlorine in the drinking water.

Chloramine in drinking water can enter the digestion and blood stream in another form called nitrogen balance. Nitrogen balance refers to the difference between nitrogen intake and total nitrogen loss in urine, sweat and bowel elimination. Ammonia derived mainly from a breakdown of amino acid pathways is toxic to all animals. Human tissues therefore, initially detoxify ammonia by converting it to glutamine for transport to the liver. Collateral health damage from ammonia upsets the pH balance of the body. If the liver is functioning properly, it releases ammonia converted into no-toxic nitrogen-rich compound urea in the urine. If the amine of the liver is compromised, ammonia accumulates in the blood and generates serious consequences.

N-nitrosodiumethyamine (NDMA) is a probable carcinogen and a likely by-product of drinking water. Collateral health damage from this secondary cancer by-product, NDMA, will probably decrease immunity in the human body. Journal AWWA, Feb. 2001, Vol.93, No. 2 pp. 92-99.

Thyroid damage from perchlorate and other secondary carcinogens in healthy men and the white cell damage to decrease immunity is accentuated by iodite and haloacetic acids in the drinking water chemistry pathway. Percholate in the drinking water causes follicular thyroid cancer and does NOT dissipate in nine days from the body as proclaimed by Deans of Medical schools.

Collateral health damage occurs when chloamine interacts with certain medicines, such as, antidepressants. Neural-tube mutations and sperm head breakages are clinical reseach areas that should be continued under several of the clinical protocols I have reviewed from the peer-review Government research that was not continued after 1989. The EPA directive was at that time for the States to use chloramine as a disinfectant with knowledge that animal studies showed cancer in the liver and leukemia in animals. The past reseach does not fit the present EPA to continue this research since the chloramine is considered dose-related under the theory of present medicine, that “a little bit of toxin will not harm you.”

Chloramine has been identified in causation of infrastructure pipe deterioation releasing lead and other toxins from pipes eaten away by chloramine throughout America. This could and is costing consumers billions of dollars and adversely impacting public health. Health officers throughout America are using antiquated epidemiology models for continuing the use of chloramine in water by stating, “there is not substantial adverse effect” from it use. In clinical medicine this is called medical negligence with unexplained American rashs and metabolic disorders from patients with undiagnosed symptoms.

The long-term solution is to eventually replace all significant lead-bearing materials that are used in the water system, such as, recycled water made from sewage water that is blended with drinking water, in spite of the denial of its use by city officials.

We need a national movement at the headwaters for alternate enginnering technologies for ozenation and ultraviolet light and reverse osmosis and plasma laser technologies and replace the pipe infrastructure. Health costs alone will provide the economy of scale for end-organ diseases in America. After the installation of alternative technologies we will not have to set tort damage caps as in the Federal Tort Law from wrongful death suits in different State jurisdictions and Appelate Courts in equity. Since chloramine is a toxin added to the water, water qualifies to be labeled nationally as a toxin. Bottled water should have a label of ingredients for disinfectant by-products. We as Americans should have a right to vote what is in our water and in our food supply irrigated by the toxic water.

March 5, 2009
2 Comments to "Chloramine Causes Collateral Health Damage"
Chuck Says:

March 9th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Cl-NH2 is a carcinogen which means cancer causing. No amount is tolerable as it can accumulate in the body. It should not be used in any human activity, except for eradicating vermon. All chlorinated compounds are carcinogens

Retired Physics and Chemistry Instructor for over 15 years.

[Reply]

ALBERT Says:

March 12th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Buy yourself a countertop water distiller if you want completely clean water. They’re about $150 and the water is delicious. The cannister will show you the residue from the water you have added (tap, bottled, etc.) and it is alarming.

[Reply]

Shocker of a discovery for older dads

Sunday March 15, 2009
Shocker of a discovery for older dads
Insight Down Under
By JEFFREY FRANCIS


LIKE some famous movie stars and top musicians, many men in Australia and other Western nations are more inclined to marry late in life and become fathers when they are in their 40s, 50s and even 60s or 70s.

What they didn’t realise until now is that the children they fathered are at risk of being less intelligent and the performance of their brainpower leaves much to be desired in their early years.
This shocking discovery, the first ever, in a new study of researchers led by world-renowned Australian psychiatrist and brain expert Dr John McGrath, was published last week in a medical journal, PLoS Medicine.

But an interesting contrast is that children born of older women tend to score higher in the same tests designed to measure the ability to think and reason, including concentration, learning, memory, speaking and reading skills.

Whether this has anything to do with older mothers’ better socio-economic status, better health care and health literacy is not known, though Dr Grath’s research noted these conditions.

These factors do not appear to help children fathered by older men in the same way as children of older mothers, he says.

Instead, some kind of biology appears to be at work. As men age, the sperm they produce appears to acquire genetic mutations.

And while the men’s fertility declines with age, the number of damaged sperm which are still able to fertilise a woman’s egg increases.

“It was very clear: If your mother was older, you were doing better. But it went the other way for the dad,” declares Dr McGrath, who is director of Epidemiology and Developmental Neurobiology at Queensland University in Bris­bane.

The bespectacled young-looking professor has carried out various research, one of which led to him and his group discovering the importance of pre-natal vitamin D on brain development.

A winner of several national and international awards, Dr McGrath has published 110 peer-reviewed papers, three books and 13 book chapters.

Hitherto, previous studies have linked advanced paternal age to reduced fertility rate and associated problems such as increased risks of birth deformities and neuropsychiatric conditions. For example, becoming fathers at 40 or older has been linked repeatedly in the past to their offspring being at a significantly higher risk of schizophrenia, autism and a rare syndrome that causes facial or skull abnormalities.

Now, it has been discovered for the first time that children fathered by older men have an average score on the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale of six points lower than those fathered by men who were just 20.

Yet all the children have better access to health and educational services.

Although some scientists believe that the 20s and 30s are the ideal years for fatherhood, Dr McGrath stresses that researchers could not yet predict the ideal maternal and paternal age that might result in a healthy, intelligent child.

“Future generations will still be bearing the age-related mutations their fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers accumulated,” he says.

Dr McGrath points out that there is no single age threshold at which the risk increases, as is the case with women and Down syndrome after 35, and a continual decline for men.

“We, as a society, need to worry about the age of fatherhood a little bit more than in the past,” he says.

“While everyone is aware of a decline in fertility as we age, maybe the general public needs to be aware that there may be something else happening. We need to work out what underlies this association.”

His group of researchers, who have studied data collected from more than 33,400 Ameri­can children and parents ranging in age from 14 to 66, has found a correlation between advanced paternal age and lower intelligence scores.

The children were tested at eight months, four years and seven years of age. They were also assessed for their sensory discrimination, hand-eye coordination, reading, spelling and arithmetic ability.

However, some researchers have suggested that children of older mothers might do better because they experience a more nurturing and attentive home environment.

If this is correct, how is it that Dr McGrath’s study did not show the same benefit among children of older fathers?

But his group found that genetics and social factors might play a role in their findings. They say that a woman’s eggs are formed before birth, so DNA may stay relatively stable.

Sperm, on the other hand, is produced over a man’s lifetime and may gain mutations as men grow older, they say.

Despite the impact Dr McGrath’s findings have caused on society, he says humbly that it is “small and preliminary”.

Jeffrey Francis is editorial consultant, Australasia-Pacific Media

Andrew Wakefield Lauches Formal Complaint against London Sunday Times Reporter

David Kirby on HuffPo: UK Autism Doctor Launches Formal Complaint Against London Sunday Times Reporter
By David Kirby

Andrew Wakefield is not guilty of fixing data by Mercola

The Malicious Smearing of a Crusading Doctor


The position of John Witherow, chief editor of the British newspaper The Sunday Times London, may be in jeopardy following an escalating debate over a story about anti-vaccine campaigner Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Freelance journalist Brian Deer’s shown-to-be-false story alleged that Wakefield “fixed” data in a Lancet medical journal paper to show a link between the MMR vaccine, autism and serious bowel disorders in children.

For the allegation in Deer’s story to be true meant that for 10 years, a single-handed action by Wakefield had to have gone completely unnoticed by the other 12 authors on the well-known paper. While 10 of the authors have partially retracted the suggested interpretation in the paper of a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism, the bulk of the Lancet paper still stands and has been replicated in other scientific studies.

The Times also did not mention as part of the story that an investigation into Wakefield was triggered by a complaint from Brian Deer himself, meaning that his article was a report on the hearing into his own complaint.

Sources:

Child Health Safety February 19, 2009

Male 'biological clock' ticking

\By Leah Dunaief

March 11, 2009 03:36 PM

When an older man fathers a child, regardless of the age of the mother, there seems to be a small but increased risk that the child may score less well in intelligence tests. And although the risk is still quite small, such a child may also have an increased chance of birth defects and neuropsychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorders. These results of a broad scientific study involving 33,500 children born in the United States between 1959 and 1965 are causing a sea change in medical perspective.Until now, the age of the mother has been considered of paramount importance, especially since the biological clock of women is limited while the ability of men to father children continues as they age. With these results, it would appear that men too have a "clock" that begins ticking in their mid-30s. Evidence suggests that the chance of a successful pregnancy falls slightly after the father turns 35 and more so, although the risk is still quite small, after 40 years of age. This information is of particular relevance today, when more men are delaying fatherhood until their 40s. For example, in 1993, in England and Wales, about 25 percent of births within marriage were to fathers ages 35-54, but by 2003, the number had risen to 40 percent. And according to the National Center for Health Statistics in the U.S., in 2004 about 24 in every 1,000 men aged 40-44 fathered a child — an increase of 18 percent from the previous decade.Further, the children of older mothers in the study tend to fare better in intelligence tests than the children of younger mothers.John McGrath of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, led the primary study. "We report, to our knowledge for the first time, that the offspring of older fathers show subtle impairments on a range of neurocognitive tasks during infancy and childhood. The patterns of these findings were relatively consistent across ages and across neurocognitive domains," according to McGrath. However, there was no further study to show if these children catch up with their peers later in life.So what's going on here?For starters, women are born with all the cells that will evolve into future eggs. These eggs undergo 22 divisions in the womb. Men, however, produce new sperm cells throughout their lives. By age 20, sperm cells have divided 150 times and by age 50 some 840 times. With division there can be "copy error mutations," or environmentally induced mutations, which in turn could lead to developmental problems. That could explain why the man's age at fatherhood is relevant to the outcome of the pregnancy.Further, children of older mothers, while less at risk from cell mutation, may perform better also because they receive the benefits of a more nurturing home environment. They are on the right side of the heredity/environment question on both counts.A study recently published in the Archives of General Psychiatry concludes that the offspring of older fathers have a higher risk of autism than that of younger fathers. If the father is over 40, the risk, though still small, is six times higher than if the father is under 30.Researchers at Columbia University found that men aged 50 and over are three times as likely to father a child with schizophrenia compared to men 25 and under. And men aged 45-49 are twice as likely to have a child with this illness. The researchers estimated that "as many as one in four cases of schizophrenia may be caused by the age of the father." This conclusion is based on a study of 88,000 people.And in Sweden, in a study at the Karolinska Institute, the conclusion was that the older a child's father, the more likely he or she was to have bipolar disorder. Children of men 55 years and up were 1.37 times more likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder than those of men 20-24. Please note that these are still small risks overall.The risk of preterm birth increases with paternal age, according to a March 2005 issue of Epidemiology. Because of increased risk of genetic abnormalities in the offspring of older fathers, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has limited semen donors to 40 years or younger, and in the U.K., 39 is the top age.Men aged 50 and older are four times more likely to have a child with Down syndrome.Some famous older fathers include the likes of Michael Douglas, Mick Jagger and Rupert Murdoch.Perhaps society should look more kindly on older women who partner with younger men. It's an idea that tickles me.

Late-Life Fatherhood May Lower Child's Intelligence

Late-Life Fatherhood May Lower Child's Intelligence
A man's biological clock may be ticking too, researchers say
By Steven ReinbergHealthDay Reporter


MONDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- Men who put off becoming dads till later in life may pay a price: slightly lowered intelligence in their offspring.
That's the conclusion of an Australian study that found that kids born to older men underperformed on intelligence and cognitive tests from infancy to 7 years of age, compared with children of younger fathers.
But on the other hand, children born to older mothers scored higher on the same tests, the team said.
"The biological clock ticks for men, too," concluded Dr. Mary Cannon, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, and the author of an accompanying editorial in the March issue of the online journal PLoS Medicine.
"There are risks associated with delaying fatherhood," she said. "These risks may be subtle, such as a decrement of three to six points on childhood IQ tests, but can also be significant, as in the increased risks of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and autism."
One reason may be that men's sperm change as they age, the Australian researchers suggested.
"We suspect that more mutations accumulate in sperm as the dads age," said Dr. John McGrath, from the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the study's lead researcher. "These mutations may cause subtle changes in the way the brain develops. But other social factors are involved also."
For the study, McGrath's team collected data on more than 33,000 American children born between 1959 and 1965. The data, which came from the U.S. Collaborative Perinatal Project, included the children's cognitive test results at the ages of 8 months, 4 years and 7 years. The tests included assessments of sensory discrimination and hand-eye coordination, conceptual and physical coordination and, at age 7, reading, spelling and arithmetic skills.
In addition, the researchers took into account socioeconomic factors, including family income.
They found that the older the father, the more likely the child was to have lower scores on all tests except the test for physical coordination. For example, in one model, children born to 20-year-old men scored an average of 106.8 points on a standard IQ test, whereas kids born to 50-year-old men scored 100.7 points, on average.
The researchers also evaluated the children based on their mother's age. They found that the older the mother, the higher the kids' scores on the cognitive tests.
The findings suggest that "we need to worry about age of fatherhood as well as age of motherhood," McGrath said. "We need to work out what underlies this association."
Other research has suggested that the children of older mothers might do better because they experience a more nurturing, attentive home environment, but children of older fathers may not necessarily experience the same benefit.
McGrath's group also speculated that genetics and social factors might play a role in the findings. They point out that a woman's eggs are formed before birth, so DNA may stay relatively stable. But sperm is produced over a man's lifetime. Studies suggest that sperm may gain mutations as men grow older, the researchers said.
"Increased age at fatherhood has potentially significant effects on both the medical and psychological/intellectual outcomes for children," Cannon said. "There has been a great deal of emphasis for many decades on the risks associated with increasing age at motherhood, but men somehow have the impression that fatherhood can be delayed with no ill effects on offspring. It may be time to redress this balance in the minds of the public."
More information
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has more on infertility.
SOURCES: John McGrath, M.D., Ph.D., Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; Mary Cannon, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin; March 2009, PLoS Medicine, online

Scientists concluded that the 20s and early 30s are the ideal years for fatherhood

Older fathers have low-IQ babies Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:23:36 GMT

Children fathered by older men are less intelligent and perform worse in brainpower and neurocognitive tests in their early years. Previous studies had linked advanced maternal age to reduced fertility rate, adding that increased paternal age is associated with certain health problems such as an increased risk of birth deformities and neuropsychiatric conditions (schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder). These studies had also reported that children born from older mothers score above average in intelligence tests. According to a study published in the PLoS Medicine, increased paternal age lowers the child's cognitive function in abilities such as memory, learning and concentration. These children, however, have a better access to health and educational services. The average score on the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale is nearly 6 points lower in children born to fathers aged 50 compared to those born to fathers aged 20. Genetic mutation commonly seen in male sperm with aging is believed to be the factor contributing to this problem as well as the higher number of genetic defects in such children. Scientists concluded that the 20s and early 30s are the ideal years for fatherhood

"Future generations will still be bearing the age-related mutations their fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers accumulated," Dr. McGrath says.

Father's age may affect child's IQ level
Becoming a father at age 40 or older linked to offspring at a higher risk of schizophrenia, autism and syndromes that cause facial and skull abnormalities
Comments (7)

TRALEE PEARCE
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
March 10, 2009 at 9:09 AM EDT
While it's nowhere near as deafening as the female biological clock, the male timepiece is poised to start ticking just a little bit louder. Despite many famous examples of men fathering children into their 50s, 60s and 70s - Pierre Trudeau, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson - a new study adds to a growing body of evidence that those children may face a number of health problems.
Becoming a father at age 40 or older has been linked repeatedly to offspring at a significantly higher risk of schizophrenia, autism and rare syndromes that cause facial and skull abnormalities. Now, Australian researchers have found a correlation between "advanced paternal age" and lower intelligence scores in children 7 and under. The findings were published yesterday in the journal PLoS Medicine.
Researchers studied data collected from about 33,000 American children and their parents as part of the U.S. Collaborative Perinatal Project between 1959 and 1965. Fathers in the study ranged in age from 14 to 66. Their children were tested using standard intelligence scales at eight months, four years and seven years of age.
Lead author John McGrath, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, acknowledges his finding is small and preliminary.
The difference between the child of a 20-year-old and that of a 50-year-old is about two IQ points, for instance.
But as Western populations delay childbearing, it could have a significant impact, he says. "If you shift the whole population slightly one way or the other, that can translate into a whole range of health and educational outcomes."
After controlling their results for the effects of the mothers' ages and socio-economic factors such as income and education, researchers found that older moms tended to be of a better socio-economic status than young moms, with better health care and health literacy. Their children tended to score better on cognitive testing.
But these factors don't appear to help the children of older dads in the same way. Instead, something biological seems to be at work. As men age, the sperm they produce appears to acquire genetic mutations, Dr. McGrath says.
While men's fertility declines with age, the number of damaged sperm - which are still able to fertilize a woman's egg - increases.
"It was all very clear: If your mother was older you were doing better, but it went the other way for the dad," Dr. McGrath says. Researchers cannot yet predict the ideal maternal and paternal age that might result in a healthy, intelligent child.
There was no single age threshold at which the risk increases, as is the case with women and Down syndrome after age 35; for men, it was a continual decline, he says.
"We as a society need to worry about the age of fatherhood a little bit more than in the past," Dr. McGrath says. While everyone is aware of a decline in fertility as we age, "maybe the general public needs to be aware that there may be something else happening."
However, other research suggests being a very young dad can have its drawbacks, too. A recent Canadian study found that children of teenaged fathers were 15 per cent more likely to be born premature and 13 per cent more likely to be of low birth weight. They also had a 22 per cent greater risk of dying within four weeks.
These problems were associated with socio-economic factors, says lead researcher Shi-Wu Wen, a senior scientist in clinical epidemiology at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and a professor at the University of Ottawa. "Teenaged boys often don't have stable income, don't know how to care for the baby. They sometimes smoke and use drugs more frequently," he says.
While his work did not find a link with advanced paternal age, he says the Australian research focused more on the biological underpinnings of advanced paternal age and its results appeared "reasonable" and "common sense."
"The chance of mutation is increasing with paternal age," he says.
Researchers are also trying to look at possible epigenetic effects of older dads: How these findings play out in future generations.
"Future generations will still be bearing the age-related mutations their fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers accumulated," Dr. McGrath says. "It's a non-trivial issue."

Older fathers' children are less intelligent, research finds

MELBOURNE (AFP) — Children fathered by older men are likely to be less intelligent than the offspring of younger dads, Australian and US scientists have found in a report published Tuesday.

Older fathers link to child brain

Older fathers link to child brain

Gene mutations tend to be more common in older fathers
Children of older fathers perform less well in a range of brainpower tests during infancy and early childhood, a study found.
In contrast, children with older mothers did well on the tests, which assessed abilities such as memory, learning and concentration.
Experts believe mutations in a man's sperm, which build over time, may be a factor.
The University of Queensland study appears in the journal PLoS Medicine.
Nature intended us to have our children earlier in our lives than we currently are
Dr Allan PaceyUniversity of SheffieldThe age at which men and women are having children is increasing in the developed world.
But while the effect of increasing maternal age on reduced fertility is widely known, the impact of increased paternal age is not as well established.
However, older fathers have been linked to a range of health problems, including an increased risk of birth deformities and neuropsychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder.
The Queensland team analysed data on 33,437 children born between 1959 and 1965 in the US.
Each child was given a range of tests of cognitive function at eight months, four years, and seven years.
The researchers adjusted their study to take account of socio-economic factors, such as family income and parental education.
They found that the older the father, the more likely the child was to have lower scores on the various tests.
In contrast, the older the mother the higher the scores of the child in the cognitive tests.
Nurturing environment
Previous researchers have suggested children of older mothers may perform better because they experience a more nurturing home environment.
But the latest study suggests this might not be the case in relation to fathers.
Genetic factors are likely to be key, as there is evidence that genetic mutations become more widespread in a man's sperm as he ages.
But the Queensland team said the impact of social factors could also not be ruled out, although they said a child would usually benefit socioeconomically from having an older father, with better access to health and educational services.
The researchers, led by Dr John McGrath, wrote: "Given the trend towards older maternal and paternal ages in the developing world, policy-makers may want to consider promoting an awareness of the risks to children that this study associates with delayed fatherhood."
Dr Allan Pacey, an expert in fertility at the University of Sheffield, said: "We have known for some time that the children born from older fathers are at increased risk of a number of medical problems and this is almost certainly because as men get older the sperm production gets less efficient and their sperm have a higher number of genetic defects.
"The author's observation that most neurocognitive outcomes is also reduced in the children of older fathers provides a further piece of evidence to remind us that nature intended us to have our children earlier in our lives than we currently are."

Older Dads’ Aging Sperm May Harm Intelligence of Offspring

Older Dads’ Aging Sperm May Harm Intelligence of Offspring
By John Lauerman
March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Children of older fathers have lower intelligence scores than those born to younger men, perhaps because of cumulative damage to men’s sperm during their lives, Australian and U.S. researchers found.
Children born to fathers who were age 20 scored an average of 2 points higher on an IQ test than children born to 50-year- old fathers, according to the study of data collected on 33,437 children from 1959 through 1965. Average IQ among children dropped steadily on a number of tests as their fathers’ ages rose, according to the research published today in Public Library of Science, Medicine, an online journal.
More men and women are becoming parents at later ages, probably for career and financial reasons, said Mary Cannon, a psychiatrist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin who wasn’t involved in the analysis. Children of older fathers have been shown previously to be at higher risk for some ailments. More research into the health effects of this trend is needed, she said in a commentary in the same journal.
“The body of evidence implicating paternal age as a risk factor for a range of adverse offspring outcomes should not be ignored,” Cannon said in the commentary.
The study looked at intelligence test scores of children at ages 8 months, 4 years and 7 years. The children were the only offspring of their parents. Results were adjusted for factors that might affect their performance on tests, such as family income, said John McGrath, a psychiatrist at the University of Queensland in St. Lucia, Australia, who led the analysis.
Benefits of Mothers’ Age
The data confirmed earlier reports that children of older mothers perform better on intelligence tests, a finding that has been attributed to higher income and education among women who wait to have their first child. That trend holds true even though children born to women age 40 and older are at increased risk for Down syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the brain, heart and other organs, McGrath said.
Children of older fathers have been shown to be at risk for physical and mental conditions, such as cleft palate, congenital heart conditions, schizophrenia and autism. At advanced ages, fathers may be more likely to make mutation-laden sperm that leads to such ailments, McGrath said.
Women make all their egg cells before they’re born, when they’ve yet to be exposed to many environmental toxins, such as radiation and chemicals, which can lead to mutations. Men continue to make fresh supplies of sperm over their lifetimes that are subject to mistakes in DNA replication, McGrath said.
“My strong hunch is that these types of new mutations in the father’s sperm may underpin this finding,” McGrath said March 6 in a telephone interview. “Evidence is coming together that the clock is ticking for dads.”
His group has funding to study the theory further in mice, he said. Scientists from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island also collaborated on the study.
“I wouldn’t suggest that anyone change their reproductive habits yet, but there’s a convergence of evidence saying that paternal age needs to be on the radar screen,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net.

Children of older fathers do less well in IQ tests

Children of older fathers do less well in IQ tests

Mon Mar 9, 8:14 am ET
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Children of older fathers appear to perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy and childhood, a study by researchers in Australia shows.
In contrast, the study found that children with older mothers tended to gain higher scores in the same tests designed to measure the ability to think and reason, including concentration, learning, memory, speaking and reading skills.
Men and women are having children later particularly in developed countries. But while the effects of having children later for women are widely discussed, consequences of increased paternal age are not as well known.
Recent studies have drawn links between older fathers and specific health problems in their children, including birth deformities and cancer, as well as neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.
In the study, the researchers analyzed data from intelligence tests taken by 33,437 children who were born between 1959 and 1965 in the United States.
The children were tested at 8 months, 4 years and 7 years and were assessed for their sensory discrimination, hand-eye coordination, reading, spelling and arithmetic ability.
They found that the older the father, the more likely the child would have lower scores on the various tests.
In contrast, the older the mother, the higher the scores of the child in the cognitive tests.
"Previous researchers have suggested that the children of older mothers may perform better because they experience a more nurturing home environment; if this is the case, this study suggests that children of older fathers do not necessarily experience the same benefit," the researchers wrote in a statement.
The researchers said the lower scores obtained by offspring of older men may have to do with mutation.
"Unlike a woman's eggs which are formed when she herself is in the womb, a man's sperm accumulates over his lifetime, which previous studies have suggested can mean increased incidence of mutations in the sperm at an older age," they wrote.
(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn)

Dad's Age May Lower Junior's IQ

Dad's Age May Lower Junior's IQ
The Older the Father, the Less Intelligent the Child?
By JOSEPH BROWNSTEINABC News Medical UnitMarch 9, 2009

Though the media have been abuzz in recent years over the phenomenon of cougars -- older women dating much younger men -- a new study hints that pairings of older mothers and younger fathers might be optimal for the children's IQs.

Children of older fathers appear to perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy and childhood, a study by researchers in Australia shows.(Getty Images/ABC News Graphic )
The study of more than 33,000 children in the United States looked at parental age and how it affected scores on intelligence tests at 8 months, 4 years and 7 years of age. While the children of older fathers scored slightly lower, the children of older mothers tended to perform slightly better.
"In general, you would predict that the offspring of older parents would do better, because the parents tend to have better socioeconomic position, stability, education, health literacy, etc.," said Dr. John McGrath, a psychiatrist and epidemiologist at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia, and one of the study's authors.
Related


"This is exactly what we see for the offspring of older mothers. This would probably be driven by understandable socio-cultural factors. Thus, the fact that we see the opposite pattern for fathers' age is startling."
The deficits of the children of older fathers -- whose sperm will degrade as it replicates over time, in contrast to eggs, which are formed early in a woman's development -- are worrisome, McGrath said, because of the trend of men waiting longer to have children.
That might even pose a problem to future generations.
"Over time, many societies are delaying parenthood," he said. "Worryingly, if the adverse health and educational outcomes we see are due to new mutations in dad's sperm cell, these will probably be transmitted to the next generation."
Given the size of the study, the small deficits found in the children of older fathers were still significant. But while other researchers called the findings interesting, they expressed skepticism at how well the findings would translate to today, because the sample of children in the study was taken between 1959 and 1965.

"Increased age at fatherhood has potentially significant effects on both the medical and psychological/intellectual outcomes for children,"

Late-Life Fatherhood May Lower Child's Intelligence
A man's biological clock may be ticking too, researchers say
Posted March 9, 2009

By Steven ReinbergHealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- Men who put off becoming dads till later in life may pay a price: slightly lowered intelligence in their offspring.


That's the conclusion of an Australian study that found that kids born to older men underperformed on intelligence and cognitive tests from infancy to 7 years of age, compared with children of younger fathers.
But on the other hand, children born to older mothers scored higher on the same tests, the team said.
"The biological clock ticks for men, too," concluded Dr. Mary Cannon, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland, and the author of an accompanying editorial in the March issue of the online journal PLoS Medicine.
"There are risks associated with delaying fatherhood," she said. "These risks may be subtle, such as a decrement of three to six points on childhood IQ tests, but can also be significant, as in the increased risks of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and autism."
One reason may be that men's sperm change as they age, the Australian researchers suggested.
"We suspect that more mutations accumulate in sperm as the dads age," said Dr. John McGrath, from the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the study's lead researcher. "These mutations may cause subtle changes in the way the brain develops. But other social factors are involved also." "These risks may be subtle, such as a decrement of three to six points on childhood IQ tests, but can also be significant, as in the increased risks of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and autism."
For the study, McGrath's team collected data on more than 33,000 American children born between 1959 and 1965. The data, which came from the U.S. Collaborative Perinatal Project, included the children's cognitive test results at the ages of 8 months, 4 years and 7 years. The tests included assessments of sensory discrimination and hand-eye coordination, conceptual and physical coordination and, at age 7, reading, spelling and arithmetic skills.
In addition, the researchers took into account socioeconomic factors, including family income.
They found that the older the father, the more likely the child was to have lower scores on all tests except the test for physical coordination. For example, in one model, children born to 20-year-old men scored an average of 106.8 points on a standard IQ test, whereas kids born to 50-year-old men scored 100.7 points, on average.
The researchers also evaluated the children based on their mother's age. They found that the older the mother, the higher the kids' scores on the cognitive tests.
The findings suggest that "we need to worry about age of fatherhood as well as age of motherhood," McGrath said. "We need to work out what underlies this association."
Other research has suggested that the children of older mothers might do better because they experience a more nurturing, attentive home environment, but children of older fathers may not necessarily experience the same benefit.
McGrath's group also speculated that genetics and social factors might play a role in the findings. They point out that a woman's eggs are formed before birth, so DNA may stay relatively stable. But sperm is produced over a man's lifetime. Studies suggest that sperm may gain mutations as men grow older, the researchers said.
"Increased age at fatherhood has potentially significant effects on both the medical and psychological/intellectual outcomes for children," Cannon said. "There has been a great deal of emphasis for many decades on the risks associated with increasing age at motherhood, but men somehow have the impression that fatherhood can be delayed with no ill effects on offspring. It may be time to redress this balance in the minds of the public."
More information
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has more on infertility.

“Advanced Paternal Age Is Associated with Impaired Neurocognitive Outcomes during Infancy and Childhood”

Dear old dad, but not mom, may cause lower IQs

by William Atkins
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Page 1 of 3


!According to an Australian-led study, children of older fathers do not perform as well on intelligence tests as children of younger dads. However, these same children had higher scores on IQ tests when they had older aged mothers, when compared to younger ones.
The article “Advanced Paternal Age Is Associated with Impaired Neurocognitive Outcomes during Infancy and Childhood” is published in the journal PloS Medicine (6(3): e40 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000040).Its authors are J. McGrath, S. Saha, A.G. Barnett, C. Foldi, T.H. Burne, D.W. Eyles, and others.The Australian researchers analyzed data from 33,437 children born in the United States between 1959 and 1965.The children had fathers as young as 14 years of age when they were born, and dads as old as 66 years.Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests had been given to these children when they were eight months old, and again at four years and seven years of age.The U.S.-based Collaborative Perinatal Project provided the tests. In addition, the children were tested at these three times for hand-eye coordination, reading, spelling, math, and sensory discrimination (such things as concentration, learning, thinking, memory, etc).Page two continues with the conclusions of the study, along with additional information.

Older men may have less intelligent kids

Older men may have less intelligent kids
10:08 09 March 2009 by Emma Young
While men, unlike women, can continue having children into old age, there could be a price to pay in terms of their child's intelligence.
John McGrath at the University of Queensland, Australia, and colleagues analysed data on more than 33,000 US children at the age of eight months, four years and seven years.
They found that those born to older dads scored more poorly on a range of intelligence tests that looked at concentration, memory, reasoning and reading skills. In contrast, the kids of older mothers scored more highly than those of younger mothers.
IQ drop
"Folk wisdom tells us that the offspring of older parents should get better opportunities and better nurturing," says McGrath, and these social factors would be expected to help boost their child's mental performance. "That is exactly what we find for mothers – but exactly what we don't find for dads, which is startling."
However, the differences in scores for the children of older and younger dads were small, amounting to about two IQ points for the child of a 20-year-old father compared with the child of a 50-year-old man.
The team suspects that age-related accumulations of genetic errors in the cells that produce sperm might account for their results. This might explain other work finding increased risks of schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder in the children of older dads, adds McGrath.
"I don't think we have enough evidence to say that fathers should avoid parenthood after a certain age," he says, "but I think we do need to educate people that there are risks they didn't know about."
Journal reference: PLoS Medicine ()DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000040)

Schizophrenia non-familial blame old dad?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,506910,00.html
Not the sharpest? Blame old dad
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Leigh Dayton, Science writer March 10, 2009
Article from: The Australian
IF your IQ isn't up to brain surgery or a Nobel Prize, blame your ageing dad.
Intellectual whizzes, on the other hand, can thank their older mums.
The surprising conclusions come from an Australian and US team led by neuroscientist John McGrath of the University of Queensland's Brisbane-based Queensland Brain Institute.
In their study of 17,148 boys born in the US between 1959 and 1965, they found that children conceived by older fathers performed less well on a range of thinking tests given at eight months, four years and seven years than those born to younger dads.
They took into account other possible factors such as education, mental health and income, with the same result.
"While we didn't find a clean threshold above or below which there is a risk (of lower IQ), the risk increased steadily the older the dads were," Professor McGrath said yesterday.
Writing in the US journal Public Library of Science Medicine, his team said their results contrasted sharply with earlier studies showing that the older the mother at conception, the smarter the child.
According to Professor McGrath and his colleagues, the difference may lie in the male and female reproductive systems. A woman is born with a fixed number of eggs that have undergone 22 cell divisions in the womb. But sperm cells divide every 16 days after a boy reaches puberty. By age 20, the original sperm cells have divided roughly 150 times; by age 50, 840 times. The more cell divisions, the more mutations; the more mutations, the greater the chance a child will be born with physical or neurological abnormalities.
Until recently, studies of the risks of later conception focused on women. It's well known, for instance, that as women age, the likelihood increases of their having a child with the developmental and intellectual disorder Down syndrome.
In a review of the team's paper, also in PLOS Medicine, psychiatrist Mary Cannon of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland wrote that evidence was accumulating that advanced paternal age was a risk factor for neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and autism, as well as physical problems such as cleft lip and palate, childhood cancers and congenital heart defects.
"The body of evidence implicating paternal age as a risk factor for a range of adverse offspring outcomes should not be ignored," she concluded.
To tease out precisely why older dads sire youngsters with IQ scores up to three points lower than younger fathers, Professor McGrath's group has begun investigating a group of 7000 babies born in Brisbane in the 1980s.
They are also studying the phenomenon in mice to identify the mechanism or mechanisms involved.
"Age is something to factor in when planning a family," Professor McGrath said.

Old dads schizophrenia autism cancers MS type 1 diabetes

Not the sharpest? Blame old dad
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Leigh Dayton, Science writer March 10, 2009
Article from: The Australian
IF your IQ isn't up to brain surgery or a Nobel Prize, blame your ageing dad.
Intellectual whizzes, on the other hand, can thank their older mums.
The surprising conclusions come from an Australian and US team led by neuroscientist John McGrath of the University of Queensland's Brisbane-based Queensland Brain Institute.
In their study of 17,148 boys born in the US between 1959 and 1965, they found that children conceived by older fathers performed less well on a range of thinking tests given at eight months, four years and seven years than those born to younger dads.
They took into account other possible factors such as education, mental health and income, with the same result.
"While we didn't find a clean threshold above or below which there is a risk (of lower IQ), the risk increased steadily the older the dads were," Professor McGrath said yesterday.
Writing in the US journal Public Library of Science Medicine, his team said their results contrasted sharply with earlier studies showing that the older the mother at conception, the smarter the child.
According to Professor McGrath and his colleagues, the difference may lie in the male and female reproductive systems. A woman is born with a fixed number of eggs that have undergone 22 cell divisions in the womb. But sperm cells divide every 16 days after a boy reaches puberty. By age 20, the original sperm cells have divided roughly 150 times; by age 50, 840 times. The more cell divisions, the more mutations; the more mutations, the greater the chance a child will be born with physical or neurological abnormalities.
Until recently, studies of the risks of later conception focused on women. It's well known, for instance, that as women age, the likelihood increases of their having a child with the developmental and intellectual disorder Down syndrome.
In a review of the team's paper, also in PLOS Medicine, psychiatrist Mary Cannon of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland wrote that evidence was accumulating that advanced paternal age was a risk factor for neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and autism, as well as physical problems such as cleft lip and palate, childhood cancers and congenital heart defects.
"The body of evidence implicating paternal age as a risk factor for a range of adverse offspring outcomes should not be ignored," she concluded.
To tease out precisely why older dads sire youngsters with IQ scores up to three points lower than younger fathers, Professor McGrath's group has begun investigating a group of 7000 babies born in Brisbane in the 1980s.
They are also studying the phenomenon in mice to identify the mechanism or mechanisms involved.
"Age is something to factor in when planning a family," Professor McGrath said.

Older Paternal Age and Schizophrenia James Watson co-discoverer of DNA structure is concerned because he was 42 when his son was born

His son suffers from schizophrenia.
From The Sunday Times
March 8, 2009
Not too bright? Now the blame is on your old man
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

CHILDREN with older fathers seem to perform worse in intelligence tests, according to a study due out this week.
They tended to obtain significantly lower scores in a variety of cognitive tests than those born to younger fathers, researchers have found.
The results could be controversial. Until recent years it had been thought that it was a mother’s age that had most impact on the health and abilities of children. The father’s age, by contrast, was thought to be much less important.
The research, led by John McGrath, of the Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia, suggests such ideas need rethinking.
“The offspring of older fathers show subtle impairments on tests of neurocognitive ability during infancy and childhood,” he said. “In light of the trends to delay fatherhood, the clinical implications and the mechanisms underlying these findings warrant closer scrutiny.”
Other research has shown linkage between advanced paternal age (men over 35) and an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as dyslexia. Such findings prompted James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, to speak of his concern. His son Rufus suffers from schizophrenia and as more is uncovered about its causes Watson has publicly questioned if he is to blame. “I worry that I was 42 with Rufus,” he says. “I read that the frequency of schizophrenia goes up with the age of both parents.”
The tests, designed to measure the ability to think and reason, also generated a second startling finding — that children with older mothers gain higher intelligence scores.
McGrath analysed data on 33,437 Americans born between 1959 and 1965. All were tested at eight months, four years and seven. The data set, despite its age, remains one of the best resources. McGrath also used advanced statistical techniques to remove environmental influences.
For McGrath one of the key questions is the underlying biological mechanisms. One idea is that as men age the cells that produce sperm suffer increasing numbers of mutations, which are passed on to an offspring.
Why, though, would children born to older mothers tend to have higher intelligence? McGrath suggests this is because women’s eggs are formed when they are still in the womb and so their DNA is protected from mutation until they are used.

Bird Flu Accidentally Sent As Vaccine

Bird Flu Accidentally Sent As Vaccine
Officials at the World Health Organization and and the European Centre for Disease Control have launched an investigation into how live Avian Bird Flu virus (both H5N1 and H3N2) was accidentally shipped to 18 countries as Bird Flu vaccine.
Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. accidentally sent an “experimental virus material,” which mixed H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, to an Austrian research firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology in late December. That company then shipped portions of the mixture to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.
Subcontractors in the Czech Republic caught the error in early February when testing the shipment on ferrets. The animals died from the inoculation, indicating a live Bird Flu virus.
Officials say the 37 people who were exposed to the virus have so far not shown any signs of infection. However, an Austrian news article from February 11 reports a Vienna hospital treated 19 outpatients on February 9 because of exposure to “bird flu virus.” The article said no one was sick, there was no evidence of infection, and the females were prophylaxed with antivirals (presumably Tamiflu).
People infected with a mixture of H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could become incubators for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.
Baxter International Inc. follows a BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) protocol which prevents the cross-contamination of materials. “It was a combination of just the process itself, (and) technical and human error in this procedure,” said Christopher Bona, Baxter’s director of global bioscience communications. Bona would not give any more information due to “trade secrets”.
The mishap comes at an unfortunate time for Baxter International Inc., which was just about to secure a Euopean-wide license for the Avian Bird Flu vaccine.
Posted in War On Terror. Tagged with Avian Bird Flu, Baxter International Inc, mix up, vaccine, virus.
By NewsGuy March 6, 2009
9 Responses
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ETB said
on March 6, 2009
I wonder if Affrimative Blacktion employees are responsible for it? DUH!
Space Monkey said
on March 6, 2009
Yeah, I saw V for Vendetta when it came out. Oh, wait, this isn’t a movie review? A pharmaceutical company shipped weapons grade viruses as vaccines to almost 20 countries? And that same company was expecting a contract to cure the pandemic disease it was, supposedly, unknowingly spreading under the auspices of free “flu shot” vaccines?
Well, :cough:, the host country to that company should be seen as an aggressor in an act of war. Oh wait, that country was the US? And turns out former DoD Sec. Don Rummsfeld (a.k.a. Rummy) is heavily vested in Tamiflu, which supposedly was to make the antidote to Bird Flu.
Wow. And you know the clincher? In the movies the good guys win in the end. Right? Let me fill you in on what’s not going to happen here. Nobody is going to be held accountable for this act of war that could have set off a pandemic and killed who knows how many people.
Oh, and for a preview check this out: Hey Americans, your hosptial system is already overwhelmed and atrophying into a state of total dysfunction. The nurses I know won’t take the flu shots they distribute, are grossly overworked, and thus probably won’t show up to work if and when a pandemic here reaches Biblical proportions.
They’ll let you die. Just like the gubm’t is letting you be rolled by Wal Street and just like it too will let you die.
And you know when the outbreak will begin? Right about the time that the people take to the streets to revolt against hyperinflation, the wipeout of their savings, over taxation, and outright tyranny by the Wal-Street-Washington complex. Right about the time the rebellion is born, you’ll feel a fever setting in.
Enjoy the show!
S.D. said
on March 6, 2009
Why US and Russian media are silent about the incident?
nader paul kucinich gravel said
on March 6, 2009
Pls note the complete Main Stream Media Blackout in the States ~Along with a flood of dumped vaccine stories to hide it…
Rosco P Coultrain said
on March 6, 2009
Accident? The safeguards put in place to prevent this make this about as accidental as when the live nukes went missing on a trip from North Dakota to Louisiana in 2007. Baxter just tried to start a pendemic ON PURPOSE. Picket and boycott until there are prosecutions.
Whitey said
on March 6, 2009
thats what happens when you hire shitty little muslims to do white mans medicine
T. Ferguson said
on March 6, 2009
Google “Bayer” + “Factor 8″Clearly Red handed, and open and shut.
A coworker of mine suffers such cognitive dissonance that his answer to both of these stories was that they were “made up” and put on the web by bloggers.
Juan Abea Freeman said
on March 6, 2009
They have been doing stuff like that for a very long while.It is called “Depopulation Agenda”, They are part of the New World Order Plan, Agenda 21, PNAC, etc. They should be brought down immediately. They are trying to start a Pandemic. There is no other explanation. This was no accident.
Endgame said
on March 6, 2009
So I guess I won’t open this envelope that keeps chirping.
Ba Dum Tiss

It is not accurate for members of the media to report that the link between vaccines has been “disproven.”

March 01, 2009
David Kirby: US Health Officials Back Study Idea on Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Children – Will Media Take Note?
By David Kirby

It is not accurate for members of the media to report that the link between vaccines has been “disproven.” This is especially true in light of recent news from the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, and a series of news items from the Federal Court of Claims, Federal health agencies, leading universities and top autism researchers around the country. There are now many reasons why the media should continue its coverage of this serious and ongoing debate: