According to a new study, boys in their early teens who smoke and use e-cigarettes run the danger of passing along damaged genes to their offspring, increasing the likelihood that they will experience health issues like asthma, obesity, and lung disorders.
Researchers from the universities of Southampton and Bergen caution that vaping may result in illnesses with a similar symptomatology.
Nearly 900 persons between the ages of seven and 50 were investigated by the researchers, who also looked at their dads’ smoking habits. The offspring of smokers under the age of 15 had 19 alterations across 14 genes linked to asthma, obesity, and wheezing. The modifications discovered have an impact on how cells regulate gene expression by turning on and off DNA methylation and DNA packaging.
Our studies have shown that the health of future generations depends on the actions and decisions made by young people today – long before they become parents – in particular for boys in early puberty and mothers/grandmothers both prior to pregnancy and during pregnancy, said Professor of Norway’s University of Bergen.
Early puberty may offer a crucial window of physiological changes in boys, according to research fellow at the University of Southampton.
The stem cells that will produce sperm for the rest of their lives are developing at this time. Boys who use e-cigarettes and smoke incur the risk of compromising the genes of their offspring. According to certain animal research, nicotine in cigarette smoke may be what causes epigenetic alterations in offspring.
Therefore, it is really concerning that young people today, particularly adolescent guys, are being exposed to very high nicotine levels through vaping. People whose fathers smoked while they were teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s, when tobacco use was far more prevalent, provide the study’s evidence.
Although we can’t say for sure that vaping will have the same consequences across generations, we shouldn’t wait a few generations to determine the effects that teenage vaping may have. The time to act is now.
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