Women and girls whose grandparents or πού great-grandparents began to they smoke from a young age, they tend to have more body fat, according research which utilized data from thirty years of research on children born in the 90s.
Previous research had found that when the father was smoker already before his adolescence, then his sons - but not his daughters - would have more body fat than expected.
Now, researchers believe they have succeeded Woman with increased body fat to their grandparents who started smoking before the age of 13. They found no corresponding effect in male offspring.
What the research found
Research shows that exposure to specific substances can lead to changes, which then bequeathed to the next generations. However, the research team acknowledges that much more research is needed to confirm its findings, but also to understand how this process works.
They have been able to locate the possible connection because of the details and in depth intergenerational data provided by his study University of Bristol, and belongs to the findings that scientists who began the study in 1991 did not expect to emerge.
The teacher Gene Golding, who began research on Children in the '90s and is the lead author of the latest report, praised the study participants - who began by researching 14.000 pregnant women and are now studying their children and grandchildren.
The findings of the study over time
Other surprising findings of the study include the finding 20 years ago that women who consume fatty fish during pregnancy, even only once every two weeks, give birth to children with better eyesight. It is believed that this was the first time that a link was established between diet in pregnancy and the development of vision in children.
A study published in 2013 concluded that iodine deficiency in pregnancy could have a negative effect on the mental development of children. The discovery was made possible because the study included urine samples from the participants' early stages of pregnancy, as well as detailed records of their diet.
Another finding concerned her genetic predisposition to type 2 diabetes, concluding that the first signs can be detected even in eight-year-olds. Also, a connection was found between allergies in nuts and moisturizers with nut oils. The children involved in the research allowed the scientists to even look at how wounds heal by examining the scars from the BCG vaccine.
Grandparents' sins…
For the latest study, published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports, the researchers looked at data on participants 'grandparents' smoking. They could not examine how the smoking of their grandparents, because those who smoked were minimal, but they believed that they could have reliable data on the male side of the family, as it is likely that men would brag about how young was when they made their first cigarette.
Golding explained: "This research gives us two important results: First, that before adolescence, a boy's exposure to certain substances can affect the generations that will follow him. "Second, one of the reasons children become overweight may not be related to diet and exercise, but to their parents' lifestyle or the presence of relevant factors over the years."
Golding also notes that animal experiments have shown that male exposure to certain chemicals before reproduction can affect offspring, but doubts have been raised as to whether such phenomena play a role in humans.
"If these connections are confirmed by other data sets, it will be one of the first studies in humans with data suitable for us to begin to examine these connections and to identify the origin of potentially important intergenerational relationships. There is still a lot to learn ", Golding concluded.
With information from the Guardian