A large study released today reveals that men’s biological time clocks are ticking away with major implications for their children’s mental health.
A study of nearly 3 million Danes shows children with older fathers are more likely to develop mental health disorders during their lifetimes including schizophrenia, mood disorders, neurotic disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders and other developmental and childhood disorders such as autism and developmental disabilities.
Researchers led by John McGrath of the Queensland Brain Institute looked at the parental ages of 2,894,688 people at birth between the years 1955 and 2007 and followed the range of disorders above and below age 29.
“We found that the overall risk for psychiatric disorders, in particular mental retardation, autism and schizophrenia, increased for those born to a father over the age of 29 years,†McGrath said in a statement.
The mutated sperm cells of older fathers may be the trouble. Male sperm cells copy themselves every sixteen days, creating endless opportunities for mistakes to be made in the duplication process. The older a man is, the more 16 day opportunities he has for so-called â€copy error†mutations to occur.
“De novo (or new) mutation in the developing sperm cell may contribute to an increased risk for a surprisingly wide range of mental health disorders, including schizophrenia, autism and mental retardation,†McGrath said.
Older Fathers in Famine Times
The team also confirmed a relationship between younger mothers and substance abuse disorders in offspring, hyperkinetic disorders and mental retardation.
So when it comes to mental illness, it’s all a reminder that time and tide stop for men and women in slightly different ways.
We are not Danish but the conclusions are transferrable. For our unfortunate family, or anyone of Irish descent with schizophrenia in the generations, it’s more confirmation of what went wrong over there.
Tracing the hereditary arc back from Boston to Ireland, I learned that our Irish ancestors had the latest age of paternity in all of Europe. That and the highest rates of madness. It was all part of the famine economy, which to me is the smoking gun that explains an epidemic of insanity in 19th century Ireland.
Apart from the great one, famine in Ireland was more or less a permanent fixture of the peasant economy imposed from outside.
Those were our late marrying kinsmen, old Irish bachelors on the west side of the Shannon River, where they’d all been driven by Cromwell, literally to the western ends of the European Earth, to be starved out.
Making matters worse, in famine times an Irish bachelor didn’t become “eligible†for marriage until his dad died and he got the potato patch. You migh’ve been 60 before you went looking for a young wife in your parish.
For schizophrenia at least, older sperm is nearly as risky as prenatal malnourishment. The two are found together, of course, prenatal starvation and adult schizophrenia, on the one hand, and late age of paternity and adult schizophrenia on the other.
No wonder Ireland had the highest rates of admissions to mental asylums for 140 years on the trot. Condition were perfect for madness to jump the banks: in vitro starvation, older fathers, all the misery lubricated with lots of alcohol, an exceptionaly heavy moonshine known as poiton. It was as if there was a schizophrenia stew cooking.
This is the theme of my book Stalking Irish Madness (available in Kindle form by request at [email protected].), with one big caveat: Today you are no more likely to develop schizophrenia than anyone else if you are Irish. At one time though, on average, you had a head start straight from the womb. (Cold comfort to my two sisters, who I believe carry the neurobiological legacy.)
The relationship with hunger is well established from famine studies in Holland, in the 1940s, and China in the 1960s.
Other studies have seen epigentic effects 150 years downstream.
More recently, scientists have found that folate deficiencies may play a role in psychosis. Pass the green leafy veggies please!
Famine Makes Comeback
In famine era Ireland the image emerges of the aging bachelor having his pick of young parish girls upon eligibility—that is, once he inherited the small patch of potatoes that stood between life and death.
Older fathers and younger mothers, according to this Danish study, may make the worst possible combination.
Does it follow that my two sisters Michelle and Austine are feeling the aftershocks of what went on six generations ago in Ireland where all these factors were pronounced?
Not incontrovertibly, but our own family bread crumbs led me right back through five generations to the bog Ireland scene of the crime, as it were, where the cruelest human tragedy in 19th century Europe took place.
Alcohol, of course, is the first thing that comes to mind with the Irish, but it’s implicated much more obliquely. Alcohol, as we all suspect, was also self medication, the nostrum you needed, the only escape amidst the mass death and starvation.
All three were stewing 165 years ago, a virtual stitch in DNA time for mutations to reproduce, but why should we care today?
Famine is a thing of the past, right? Wrong. Once nearly eradicated, famine is making a big comeback around the world, thanks to man’s unending stupidity.
Age of fatherhood and alcohol consumption are individual choices that we can control to hedge our bets. Famine is not.
Â
<!–
And they are apparently too stupid to realize how easy it is to ensure they are called out for their bad behavior.
–>
Comments
This post currently has
11 comments.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.
<!–
–>
    Last reviewed: 23 Jan 2014
Â