Healthier Babies - Damage to fathers' germ cells, or mutations, are responsible for some part of such unfavourable outcomes of pregnancy.

The publications on this website were written by Margaret and Arthur Wynn,

THE AGEING OF FATHERS
In the 1950s Penrose of University College, London (1955), studied the ages of the parents of babies with birth defects believed to have been caused by gene mutations. He concluded:

"The influence of the father's age is shown to he of critical significance. When the effect of the father's age on incidence is appreciable, as in achondroplasia, the hypothesis of fresh gene mutation as the cause is strengthened."

9. Conclusions


THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PROSPECTIVE FATHER

1. The time is ripe for greater attention to fathers' contribution to the outcome of pregnancy. This study suggests that fathers share responsibility with mothers for miscarriage, perinatal death and congenital malformations. Damage to fathers' germ cells, or mutations, are responsible for some part of such unfavourable outcomes of pregnancy.

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

Seminal findings
We initially examined the relationship between paternal age and the risk for schizophrenia because it is well established that paternal age is the major source of de novo mutations in the human population, and most schizophrenia cases have no family history of psychosis. In 2001, we demonstrated a monotonic increase in the risk of schizophrenia as paternal age advanced in the rich database of the Jerusalem Perinatal Cohort. Compared with the offspring of fathers aged 20-24 years, in well-controlled analyses, each decade of paternal age multiplied the risk for schizophrenia by 1.4 (95 percent confidence interval: 1.2-1.7), so that the relative risk (RR) for offspring of fathers aged 45+ was 3.0 (1.6-5.5), with 1/46 of these offspring developing schizophrenia. There were no comparable maternal age effects (Malaspina et al., 2001).

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Paternal age, size at birth, and size in young adulthood - risk factors for schizophrenia.Rasmussen F.
Child and Adolescent Public Health Epidemiology Group, Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Norrbacka, SE-17176 Stockholm, Sweden.

It is appropriate to consider schizophrenia a neurodevelopmental disorder
In fully adjusted analyses, the risk of schizophrenia was 4.62 (95% confidence interval : 2.28; 9.36) times higher in subjects whose fathers were >/=50 years old and at time of conception than in subjects whose fathers were 21-24 years old. Growth and development in fetal life and childhood are influencing the risk of schizophrenia in adulthood, but the underlying causal pathways are still unknown. De novo mutations in the germ cells of older fathers may play a causal role in the etiology of some cases of schizophrenia.