Dad’s diet may affect risk of birth defect

Canadian women are routinely told to be sure to eat healthy foods when they want to conceive a baby, but new research suggests men should do the same. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have found that male mice fed a diet low in vitamin B9 or folate had 28 per cent more offspring with birth defects.

Poor nutrition, obesity could cause problems

Folate is found in leafy green vegetables, cereals, fruit, beans and liver and is known to prevent miscarriages and birth defects in humans if taken by the mother. Many people, such as those living in Canada’s north, don’t have enough folate in their diets. In addition, research suggests that obesity, which affects about a quarter of the Canadian population, can reduce the body’s ability to absorb folate into the bloodstream.

Women are routinely given vitamin supplements including folate when they are pregnant. If this research is born out men who want to start a family may end up taking them too before conception.

Folate deficiency might affect offspring health

Besides increasing the risk of birth defects, a lack of folate in male mice was found to have other effects that might influence the health of their offspring.

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“We found that feeding (the mice) a folate-deficient diet not only increased birth defects but also changed the heritable information in the sperm so that genes that are involved in chronic disease like diabetes, obesity and genes involved in development had altered levels of metholation, meaning that maybe these would be expressed differently in the offspring,” said Sarah Kimmins, associate professor of reproductive biology at McGill University and lead author of the study.

“It’s not just all on the mum anymore”

“I would advise males that it’s not just all on the mum anymore, says Kimmins. “They need to start thinking about what they’re doing pre-conception and how they’re living their lives—what they’re eating, whether they’re smoking or drinking because not just our study, but other studies are really showing that the male reproductive health pre-conception also matters.”

Kimmins said her research group will work with fertility clinics to try to find out how men’s folate levels affect the risk of birth defects among their children and whether that compares with the results they got using mice.