By Aubrey Bloom, Texas A&M University — MedicalXPress, 1 February 2022
Prenatal visits have traditionally focused almost exclusively on the behaviour of mothers, but new research from the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences continues to suggest that science should be looking more closely at fathers’ behaviour as well. Dr Michael Golding, an associate professor in the Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology, has spent years investigating the father’s role — specifically as it relates to drugs and alcohol — in fetal development.
In a November publication in the FASEB Journal, Golding’s team showed that the epigenetic factor of prenatal exposure to alcohol in males can manifest in the placenta. Their data shows that in mice, offspring of fathers exposed to alcohol have a number of placenta-related difficulties, including increased fetal growth restriction, enlarged placentas, and decreased placental efficiency. “The placenta supplies nutrients to the growing fetus, so fetal growth restriction can be attributed to a less efficient placenta. With paternal alcohol exposure, placentas become overgrown as they try to compensate for their inefficiency in delivering nutrients to the fetus,” said lead author Kara Thomas.
“There’s information coming through in sperm that is going to impact the offspring but is not tied to the genetic code; it’s in your epigenetic code, and this is highly susceptible to environmental exposures, so the birth defects that we see might not be the mother’s fault; they might be the father’s or both, equally,” said Golding. The results don’t draw a clear line in how human male drinking prior to conception impacts fetal development, but continue to point to it as a question that needs to be further explored. Golding hopes that soon doctors and society at large will begin to ask more questions about male prenatal behaviour.