Unhealthy Diet in Fathers Could Raise Heart Disease Risk for Daughters: Study Finds
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Men who have an unhealthy, high-cholesterol diet, when they become fathers can cause increased risk of cardiovascular disease, or CVD, in their daughters, a University of California, Riverside-led mouse study has found.
The research, published in the journal JCI Insight, is the first to demonstrate this result seen only in female offspring.
CVD, the leading cause of death globally, is a group of disorders that affects the heart and blood vessels. Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a leading risk factor for CVD.
"It had been previously thought that sperm contribute only their genome during fertilization," said Changcheng Zhou, a professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine and the study's lead author. "However, recent studies by us and others have demonstrated that environmental exposures, including unhealthy diet, environmental toxicants, and stress, can alter the RNA in sperm to mediate intergenerational inheritance."
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