Conditions in the home, family, and community affect a person’s ability to stay healthy. Scientists who study these social determinants of health are trying to understand whether nature or nurture has a greater impact on a person’s ability to fight off disease.

I am a developmental physiologist who studies how alcohol consumption affects fetal development and health throughout life.

Although researchers have long known that a father’s alcohol abuse negatively impacts his children’s mental health and social development, it was unclear until now whether a father’s drinking had long-term biological effects on his child’s physical health.

A recently published study from my lab shows that chronic alcohol use by both parents has lasting effects on the next generation, making their offspring age faster and more susceptible to disease.

Disorders of the fetal alcohol spectrum

According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 11% of adults in the United States suffer from alcohol poisoning. Heavy drinking causes a multitude of health problems, including liver disease, heart problems, cognitive decline and accelerated aging.

Parents can pass these health problems on to their children. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders refer to a wide range of alcohol-related physical, developmental, and behavioral disabilities that affect 1 in 20 U.S. schoolchildren.

Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder develop adult diseases, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease, at an earlier age. Cardiovascular disease first appears in adolescence in people with these disorders, while the rest of the population is usually affected in their 40s and 50s. Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder are also more likely to be hospitalized and have a life expectancy that is 40% shorter than children without the disorder.

However, it was not clear whether these health problems were related to their living conditions (people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders have higher rates of mental disorders, which cause stress, making them more susceptible to aging and disease) or whether they were directly related to their parents’ substance use, which has long-term negative consequences for their health. In other words, could parents’ pre-pregnancy alcohol use directly affect their children’s physical health and life expectancy?

My mom and dad are drinking

In our study, my colleagues and I used a mouse model to measure the effects of maternal, paternal, or both alcohol consumption during pregnancy on aging and chronic disease in the offspring. The mice decided when and how much alcohol to drink.

We found that alcohol consumption by both fathers and mothers causes harmful changes in the mitochondria of their offspring. Often called the battery of the cell, mitochondria control many aspects of aging and health. Like a cell phone battery, mitochondria deteriorate over time, and cells lose their ability to repair damage and control metabolism.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7o0NkKez1AY?wmode=transparent&start=0Mitochondria are much more than just your cells’ energy source.

Our experiments in mice show that paternal alcohol consumption causes a defect in mitochondrial function that first appears during fetal development and persists into adulthood, causing accelerated aging of the offspring.

For example, paternal alcohol consumption doubled the risk of age-related liver disease, suggesting that alcohol consumption by paternal parents in particular may have an important impact on aging and age-related diseases. Importantly, we found that when both parents drink, the effects on offspring are worse than when only one parent drinks. For example, we observed a threefold increase in age-related scarring of the liver when both parents drink alcohol.

Treatment of fetal alcohol syndrome

People with fetal alcohol syndrome face problems throughout their lives, such as hand-eye coordination problems, memory and attention difficulties.

Early educational interventions for children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, such as using visual and auditory materials instead of written materials, may provide additional structure to help facilitate learning. Although my team and I have studied the chronic effects of alcohol, we do not know whether moderate alcohol consumption also causes mitochondrial problems.

We also don’t know if the same effects occur in people who haven’t been diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders but whose parents drink heavily. It’s still unclear whether paternal alcohol consumption affects human embryonic development, but new research is beginning to suggest that it does.

The next step is to investigate whether interventions targeting mitochondrial health, such as exercise and special diets, can improve health outcomes for people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.