The new study findings suggest that those changes can be passed down through more than one generation, the researchers said.
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The fact that tobacco use affects genetic activity is widely known. The results indicated that when a grandmother smoked while pregnant-regardless of whether the mother did as well-a child’s risk of asthma increased from 10 to 22%.
The current study, based in Sweden, is the first to investigate the risk in a whole population and to use evidence taken directly from grandmothers at the time they were pregnant.
With asthma and allergy rates rising in recent years, scientists have attempted to understand the underlying causes. But the new study focuses on how the smoking habits of mothers and grandmothers increases the risk of asthma in later generations.
There is growing evidence of a link between asthma, one of the most common childhood diseases, and smoking in previous generations, according to new research presented at the European Respiratory Society’s worldwide Congress 2015 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Whether or not the grandmothers smoked during pregnancy was recorded in the registry, as was any subsequent use of asthma medication by their grandchildren. “This study has quantified that risk saying your child is twice as likely to end up in the hospital if you continue to smoke”.
Researchers think this shows that people can inherit a risk for asthma from previous generations.
The next step is to study the sins of the (grand)fathers, say the researchers: Would the same thing happen if a grandfather smoked at the time of conception? “The findings also encourage research into inherited disease risks for other environmental exposures”. He also suggests further study into inherited disease risks for other environmental exposures.
Caroline Lodge conducted this work as a postdoctoral fellow in Umeå University and is also supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Early Career Fellowship at University of Melbourne.
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“The next stage is to investigate the potential inheritance of asthma risk through the male line, by assessing the risk of asthma in grand-children whose grandmothers smoked whilst pregnant with their fathers”, noted professor Bertil Forsberg from Umea University, Sweden.
