Unhealthy Diet in Fathers Could Raise Heart Disease Risk for Daughters: Study Finds - Video

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."

"Men who plan to have children should consider eating a healthy, low-cholesterol diet and reducing their own CVD risk factors," Zhou said. "These factors appear to affect their sperm in influencing the health of their female offspring. Our study suggests the sperm passes this information to the next generation."

Zhou and his team fed male genetically engineered mice a high-cholesterol diet, which caused them to have hyperlipidemia, a disorder that, if left untreated, can lead to heart disease and stroke. These mice were then mated with female mice that were fed a regular, low-cholesterol diet. Their litter was also fed a low-cholesterol diet. The female offspring were found to have 2-3-fold increases in atherosclerosis.

"Our study contributes to understanding the etiology of chronic diseases originating from parental exposures," Zhou said. "We hope our findings stimulate investigations of the impact of paternal exposures on offspring cardiovascular health in humans."

Reference: Rebecca Hernandez, Xiuchun Li, Junchao Shi, Tejasvi R. Dave, Tong Zhou, Qi Chen, Changcheng Zhou. Paternal hypercholesterolemia elicits sex-specific exacerbation of atherosclerosis in offspring. JCI Insight, 2024; 9 (17) DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.179291