Retrieved from https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/alcohol-and-pregnancy-men-should-be-careful-too-1.5964694
A study found that a father’s alcohol consumption habits may also have an impact on his fetus – FILE PHOTO (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)
Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press, Staff
While women who are pregnant, or are planning to become pregnant, have certainly known for a long time that they have to be very careful with their alcohol consumption, a new study with contributions from Quebec researchers warns that the same probably applies to men.
“Ten or 15 years ago, when people were proposing that a man’s living conditions might have an impact on fetal development, we just didn’t believe it,” said one of the study’s authors, professor Claude Robert of Laval University’s department of animal sciences. “We thought there was no chance that a male’s lifestyle would have an impact on fetal development.”
All the pressure was therefore put on the mother, he adds, since “she is the one who prepares the ovum, she is the one who prepares the uterus […], but now we realize that the male also has an impact”.
A study published in Scientific Reports by professor Robert, who is also a researcher at Laval University’s Centre for Research in Reproduction, Development and Intergenerational Health (CRDSI), and by scientists at Texas A&M University, suggests that fathers also have a role to play in preventing fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
They found that, in male mice that had consumed the human equivalent of five drinks in two hours each day for 70 days, proteins associated with sperm genetic material appeared in a modified biochemical form that affected the transcription of genes important for fetal development.
When these male mice were crossed with females that had never been exposed to alcohol, fetal development was affected.
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