Scientists: the older the father, the longer the children live

For men who delay the issue of procreation for a long time, there was a strong argument in favor of such a delay: American scientists came to the conclusion that the older a child's father, the higher the chances of living a long life.

Later, paternity has advantages for the survival of offspring: children and grandchildren in men of mature age seem to be "genetically programmed" for a longer life, according to a study by a team of scientists from the United States.

The results of the work are published in the latest issue of the leading American scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, it is not yet clear whether these benefits will be negated by other problems associated with the late establishment of offspring.

Short telomeres - short life

Scientists have for some time already known about the existence of a connection between life expectancy and the size of structures called telomeres located at the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres serve as a storehouse of hereditary information - DNA. In general, a small length of telomeres means a shorter life.

Telomeres serve to protect chromosomes from damage. In most cells with age they become shorter, until finally the cells lose their ability to reproduce themselves.

However, as scientists have found out, in spermatozoa, telomeres become longer with age.

And since men transmit their DNA to children through spermatozoa, these long telomeres can be inherited by the next generation.

Dr. Dan Eisenberg and colleagues from the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University in Illinois studied how telomeres are inherited, by the example of a group of young people living in the Philippines.

It was found that the telomeres measured in the blood samples of the subjects were the longer the older their fathers were at the time of the birth of the children.

The telomere extension was even greater if the paternal grandfather of the child also became a father at a later age.

Benefit or harm?

It is known that later paternity increases the risk of premature birth, but despite this, the authors of the work believe that in the long term it is beneficial to the health of the offspring.

Scientists are convinced that the inheritance of longer telomeres will be particularly useful for tissues and biological functions in which rapid cell growth and renewal takes place - such as the immune system, the digestive tract and the skin.

And this can have a significant effect on the health of the population as a whole, says Professor Thomas von Zglinicki, an aging cell expert at the University of Newcastle: "The longer the ancestors on the paternal line postpone childbearing, the longer the length of telomeres transferred to the offspring. Life in the population, as its members manage to live longer to give offspring at a later age. "

According to the professor, additional research is required: "Only in a very small number of scientific works in which the length of telomeres is related to health in adulthood, the effect - if any - of the parent's age is studied." It is still unclear what is more it affects the occurrence of diseases associated with aging, and mortality - the length of parental telomeres at conception (birth) or the rate of telomere contraction with age. "

Von Zglinicki draws attention to the fact that the authors of the work did not pay attention to the state of health in the first generation of offspring. According to him, it is possible that the benefits associated with obtaining longer telomeres from an elderly father will be reduced to zero or even completely crossed out due to problems with a higher level of total DNA damage and sperm mutations.

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