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| Fathers' smoking and childhood brain tumours |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Friday, 28 August 2009 19:01 |
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Most women know the dangers of drinking alcohol and smoking during pregnancy, and more often than not, give up both for at least nine months.Fathers, on the other hand, often believe that what they put into their bodies has little impact on their baby. This is why, when a child is diagnosed with a brain tumour, "moms especially seem to feel extra guilty because they carried the child, and they question if something they did may have caused the tumour," says Eric Bouffet, Director of the Brain Tumour Program and Neuro-oncologist at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (SickKids). Although fathers seem less susceptible to these unproductive feelings of guilt, Dr. Bouffet says fathers may also want to think twice about smoking. "New data now suggests it should be a decision by the couple to both quit smoking during, or even before pregnancy," says Bouffet. Fathers' smoking found to increase risk of tumours, mothers' did not A recent study, published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, found that fathers who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day had an increased risk of having a baby with a Central Nervous System (CNS) tumour, especially astrocytomas, the most common type of primary brain tumour. A father's smoking was also found to increase the risk of ependymomas, a rare glioma found in the brain or spine. Researchers say this finding was not restricted to smoking during the pregnancy, but that "results suggest paternal smoking during the year prior to birth, including the pre-conceptional period and pregnancy, may play a role in childhood CNS tumours," says the study's primary author, Matthieu Plichart, from Inserm, a French public health research organization, and formerly from the University of Paris-Sud. In contrast, and "consistent with previous studies," the study did not find a link between maternal smoking and tumours, says Plichart. To get the data, researchers phoned mothers and asked if they smoked or drank alcohol, coffee, tea, chocolate, or cola during pregnancy. They then asked the mothers if the fathers smoked before and during the pregnancy. Although it is possible that the mothers underreported their smoking and overreported how often their partners smoke, their answers were in line with French statistics. How smoking may affect sperm Tobacco smoke "may affect the genetic material that men carry and pass on as part of the procreation process," says Bouffet, explaining that smoke increases the risk of a mutation or change during sperm production. Moreover, when mothers breathe in sidestream smoke from the father's smoldering cigarette, the toxins in cigarette smoke can eventually cross the placenta and affect the unborn baby’s DNA. The good news: smoking on the decline (at least in Canada) Although the risk is small, "10 to 1 or even 20 to 1, an important message to dads still is: If you smoke, you may increase the risk of mutation during spermatogenesis," says Bouffet. "In the multifaceted world of childhood brain tumours, in which we know that both genetics and environment play a role, we do not have the exact answer, but we now have some answers," at least in terms of causes. The good news: although Canadian men still smoke more often than women, the number of smokers is on the decline. In the French study, 21.9% of mother's reported smoking during pregnancy whereas half of fathers smoked up to a year before birth. And as the number of Canadian smokers continues to decrease, "the good message is that this may contribute to the decrease in the number of brain tumours in children," says Bouffet. Data: 24.06.2009 Autor: AboutKidsHealth.ca |
| Last Updated on Friday, 05 February 2010 13:29 |
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