That the habit of smoke It brings a lot of harm to the body, everyone already knows that. Especially if smoking started in youth — in the early years of adulthood or in adolescence.
However, research carried out by scientists from the University of Southampton (England) and the University of Bergen (Norway) reached an unprecedented conclusion. The information was published in the scientific journal Clinical Epigenetics.
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The research revealed a biological mechanism that demonstrates the impact of smoking on younger people and their future children. Understand better below!
The research gathered data from 875 people, aged between 7 and 50 years. Their parents' smoking habits were also filtered.
In the children of men who smoked before age 15, scientists found epigenetic changes at 19 sites mapped to 14 genes. They regulate the likelihood of asthma, obesity and low lung function.
Then, the researchers made a comparison: between the profiles of fathers who smoked, active smokers and children of mothers who had smoked before pregnancy.
(Image: disclosure)
According to the researcher and co-author of the article, Gerd Toril Mørkve Knudsen, from the University of Bergen, 16 of the 19 markers associated with parental adolescent smoking had not previously been associated with maternal or guys. In other words, the greatest probability is that they came from the father.
Not only that, but scientists have come to another conclusion. Such a change in genes occurred much more often in people whose parents started smoking in adolescence than in parents who smoked at any time before the baby was conceived.
“Early puberty may represent a critical window of physiological changes in boys. This is when the stem cells are being established and will produce sperm for the rest of their lives”, explained the scientist.
Another point that the research highlighted is that the majority of people in the study have parents who spent their adolescence in the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, it was common to smoke tobacco.
The article also points out that nicotine causes these changes in genes. As today, the “fashion” is to use electronic cigarettes — the vapes — which have a high concentration of this substance, the scientific community was on alert.
The situation, according to them, is worrying. “We cannot be certain that the use of vapes will have similar effects across generations, but we cannot We must wait a few generations to prove the impact that using these items in adolescence can have. We need to act now”, highlighted one of the scientists involved in the study.
Graduated in Social Communication from the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.
