The results might help to explain the apparent rise in autism spectrum disorder: this year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, reported that one in every 88 American children has now been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a 78% increase since 2007. Better and more inclusive autism diagnoses explain some of this increase, but new mutations are probably also a factor, says Daniel Geschwind, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I think we will find, in places where there are really old dads, higher prevalence of autism.”
However, Mark Daly, a geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who studies autism, says that increasing paternal age is unlikely to account for all of the rise in autism prevalence. He notes that autism is highly heritable, but that most cases are not caused by a single new mutation — so there must be predisposing factors that are inherited from parents but are distinct from the new mutations occurring in sperm.
Historical evidence suggests that older fathers are unlikely to augur a genetic meltdown. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Icelandic men fathered children at much higher ages than they do today, averaging between 34 and 38. Moreover, genetic mutations are the basis for natural selection, Stefánsson points out. “You could argue what is bad for the next generation is good for the future of our species,” he says.
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on August 22, 2012.
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14 Comments
Add CommentSo have they done the next step with the math to see if this correlates to the rise in autism diagnosis in the United States? We know that the average age of parents is much higher and continues to climb. We know that autism rates are climbing. Time to correlate these numbers now that we have some real data indicating that paternal age matters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishmmm. Few things come to mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. This does tend to explain why IVF, and other assisted-copulation children seem to be so much more susceptible to autism and other disorders (years working at a fertility clinic tends to bring things like this to visibility.) Because the parents are older and hence pass on more mutations to fewer children which compounds with their own medical problems (beyond aging) to create a broth of mutations.
2. As a species gains more and more control over it's environment, the average age of the species will tend to climb. This then drives more mutations and hence possibly sends evolution into hyper drive (since negatively impacting mutations will generally result in the end of a genetic line). Seems like an easy enough experiment to sort fruit flies into younger and older populations and see which one adapts faster to a new condition (food supply, color, weather, drug resistance, etc...) My guess would be the older population adapts faster, as the article implys.
Authors - I think I'm gonna hate to see it, but please give the results for 18 years old's and under-age people, too. Since your report pointed out age 20 is "better" please post to all what the "optimal age" appears to be. Don't worry we (ok, I) won't be offended.
thanks!
I said all along that it was genetic mutations that are causing the explosion of neurological disorders. Now why all of the sudden is age a factor?there have always been older fathers younger moms through the course of history, its a no brainer. What they should have looked at is the fact that vaccines are known mutagens, since after all in 1986 when the vaccine companies got full immunity from lawsuits is when they really just started to require every vaccine available to maximize profits for the Pharmaceutical companies with hundreds of more vaccines in the works, could you just imagine the neurological disorders to come in the near future. There has never been a study that looks at the effects of all the vaccines which are administered to our children. So every year we are seeing an increase of about 10 % in autism rates, if it continues at this rate we will have an autism rate of about 1 in 6 within 10 years, and I seriously doubt that older fathers account for the autism epidemic, and apparently so do the researchers in this study since at the end of the article they say that "de novo gene mutations are a necessary element of human evolution", maybe they are but what mutations are the vaccines causing is what interests people as myself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLucky mutations may ultimately be beneficial for the species but in the short term fewer mutations are desirable for the health of the individual and the welfare of the family and the society as problems like autism and schizophrenia create social and personal stressors and in our society they eat up resources. What would be good would be a change in social conventions and structures to allow 20 year olds to father children and have an extended family in particular and society in general be willing to support these children, while the 20 year olds spend their time learning and achieving, instead of the current mean-spirited individualistic culture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a lot of anti-vaccine arm waving.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not the age of the father relative to the mother that is the issue but the absolute age of the father. As an individual ages there is a greater likelihood that some of their cells have spontaneously mutated. For men this means that a greater number of the sperm they produce are likely to be carrying mutated genes, thus the increased risk of offspring inheriting defective genes.
Your claim that vaccines may cause a child's genome to mutate so that they develop a genetic disorder is frankly ridiculous. At best you may be able to argue that the vaccine triggers a condition for which the child is already genetically predisposed. This would still be consistent with, albeit irrelevant to, the finding of this study. Of course, it would be inconsistent with the findings of many other studies which have found no links between vaccines and conditions which appear in early childhood but you shouldn't let that stop you.
Would death be considered an adverse effect ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe recent death of the researcher who died because he has iron overload while working with a live-attenuated plague vaccine ?
I would like a study that focuses on positive traits. An older father has a chance to pass on more evolved genes, so there could be some advantages as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, if a man was 22 when computers and the internet exploded, and is 37 now, do those 15 years of handling higher technology make him more mentally evolved, and would not that be something that becomes part of his genes?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Seylan In the genetic sense, people do not evolve based on their experiences. Working on computers for years won't make the genes more or less likely to have computer/internet abilities, and more than cutting off the tails of mice will evolve tailless mice. On the other hand, carrying a cell phone that contains rare earth metals and radiates EMF in your pants pocket could conceivably cause mutations; there are studies being conducted now to determine if this is a risk and how much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing researches ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow people can plan their families. Couples are quite often in their thirties these days before they can afford children, twice the age for reproduction centuries ago. Could this be causing an increase in mutations?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbraham was very old when Isaac and Ishmael were born to different mothers. Could there still be a very ancient mutation around in both Jews and Arabs?
But any mutation that old has probably been bred out by now, anyway.
"carrying a cell phone that contains rare earth metals and radiates EMF in your pants pocket could conceivably cause mutations"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomeone I knew got a bald spot on his scalp right where the phone's aerial touches his head. One thing a person may be able to do to reduce this is look at it scientifically , in both radio waves and ultrasound the waves cause the ferritin in the body to release its' iron. Dr. Jerome Sullivan has always held , we don't need any ferritin , as it is a storage form of iron and obviously not required by the body.
"Ultrasound-mediated release of iron from ferritin."
"Our data suggests that superoxide produced as a result of ultrasonic cavitation acts as a reducing agent, enabling the release of iron from ferritin."
"EMF-cancer link: the ferritin hypothesis"
"When EMF was coapplied with iron overload, lipid
peroxidation was further increased as compared to EMF alone while the increase in antioxidant defenses triggered by the sole iron overload was abolished. These data suggest that EMF exposure may be harmful in young adults by impairing the antioxidant defenses directed at preventing iron-induced oxidative stress"
DangDude...Says who....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso interesting to note that a recent report shows IQs are increase at the rate of 1 percent every three years...
Bob Marley's dad was 60 and his mom 17 when he was born. Bob marley died young of melanoma.
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