Dad-to-be's Diet Could Affect Long-Term Heart Health Of His Child

‘Eating for two’ isn’t just the mother-to-be’s job anymore. A new study has found that the quality of a father-to-be’s diet influences the long-term cardiovascular health of the child.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Medicine conducted an experiment on mice. They fed male mice with poor quality low protein diet and found that the offsprings had impaired blood vessel functioning which is a key indicator of cardiovascular diseases.

Previous researches have made it evident that maternal diet and health during conception impact the development of the fetus and can also result in cardiovascular dysfunction and metabolic diseases later in life. But there have been hardly any studies that look into the impact of a paternal diet and well-being and the effects it can have on the offspring’s heart health.

This new study seems to bridge the gap in our understanding by using an animal model that has explored the long-term heart health of offsprings from male mice that had consumed a poor quality low protein diet.

The researchers had fed such a diet to the mice for about 7 weeks prior to conception. Their findings suggested that the poor quality diet might have altered the genetic information carried by the sperm which could have possibly changed the way blood vessels formed in the developing embryo and thereby influenced its cardiovascular health. They also found that the seminal plasma (the fluid the sperms get carried in) also affected the offspring’s heart health.

"Our findings indicate that a poor quality paternal low-protein diet may have altered the genetic information carried in the sperm or the composition of the seminal plasma. Our study shows that a father's diet at the time of conception may affect how the blood vessels form, which then leads to permanent changes in how the blood vessels work, resulting in 'programmed cardiovascular ill-health in his offspring” said the study’s lead author Dr Adam Watkins (Assistant Professor in Reproductive Biology, University of Nottingham’s School of Medicine), "These findings are significant for people's health, as it shows that some conditions are attributed to a disturbance in early development processes which can be affected by a father's diet."