If you are a man aged above 50 years, you may have to think twice before fathering children to prevent congenital and genetic disorders!
The age of a man and his sperms, according to experts affects the quality of children he will have.
Studies show that they have an increased risk of being born with long-term genetic disorders such as dwarfism and autism,
psychosis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia and bipolar disorder among other birth defects.
Dr Olive Sentumbwe, a senior obstetrician and advisor on family health and population at the World Health Organization says that although most men are able to father children at any age, but should be cautious of such a decision in order to reduce the risk of having unhealthy babies.
“With more mature fathers, the likelihood of a baby being born with genetic mutations is double. Most genetic mutations that arise in children are actually passed down by the father’s sperm rather than the eggs of the mother,” said Dr Sentumbwe.
Apparently, the sperm quality of men does, in most cases, decline with age. And as this happens, it comes with a lot of Potential health risks can be passed on directly to the offspring of the aging dads.
The sperm also lose their ability to swim in a straight line and become genetically defective.
Dwarfism
These children risk of developing psychiatric problems and more likely to struggle at school. The children’s difficulties seemed to affect school performance, leading to worse grades at the age of 15 and fewer years in education overall.
“We were shocked when we saw the comparisons,” said Brian D’Onofrio, the first author of the study at Indiana University in the US. But he added that it was impossible to be sure that older age was to blame for the problems.
Children with older fathers had a 60% greater risk of poor performance at age 15, defined as the equivalent of an overall fail grade across 16 academic subjects. They were also 70% more likely to spend less than 10 years in formal education.
Researchers at Indiana University and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied medical and educational records of more than 2.6 million babies born to 1.4 million men.
The group amounted to nearly 90% of births in Sweden from 1973 and 2001. Using the records, the scientists added up diagnoses for psychiatric disorders and educational achievements and compared the figures for children born to fathers of different ages.
When health and school performance were compared across all the children, and factors such as parents’ education and any history of psychiatric illness were taken into account, paternal age made little difference, except for cases of bipolar disorder, which rose with older fathers.
Risk of autism
On the other hand, Dr. Robert Busingye a senior consultant gynaecologist in reproductive medicine at Mulago Hospital, suggested that men who wait until they are older to have children are not only risking difficulties conceiving, they could also be increasing the risk of passing along autism, downs syndrome – a condition in which extra genetic material causes delays in the way a child develops both mentally and physically, genomic defect, apert syndrome, crouzon syndrome, and Pfeiffer syndrome (all characterized by facial abnormalities and the premature fusion of skull bones).
Children of fathers aged 45 and over who were 3.5 times as likely to have autism, had more than twice the risk of psychotic disorders, suicidal behaviour and drug abuse. Fewer than 1% of children born to fathers younger than 45 had bipolar disorder, a figure that rose to about 14% in their siblings when fathers were 45 or older. In many cases, the risk of each disorder rose steadily with the father’s age.
Dr Busingye said that the commonest abnormality in children fathered by older fathers is downs syndrome also associated with older women.
Ryan Edwards, who studies the economics of health and ageing at the City University of New York, said the study revealed “some evidence that paternal age may worsen children’s psychiatric, behavioral and educational outcomes.”
Jennifer Roff, also at the City University of New York, had similar reservations. “I’m not saying that there is no possible genetic role for paternal age.
”I simply think that this could be confounded with other environmental factors like birth order. The extent of the problem will vary. I can imagine that for things like cognitive scores, this could be a larger problem than for things like schizophrenia.”