If Parents Smoked, Child’s Diabetes Risk Rises

Women whose mothers smoked while pregnant are two to three times as likely to be diabetic as adults. Fathers who smoked while their daughter was in utero also contribute to an increased diabetes risk, but more research is needed to establish the true effect.

“Our findings are consistent with the idea that gestational environmental chemical exposures can contribute to the development of health and disease,” says Michele La Merrill, assistant professor of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Davis.

Published in the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, the study analyzed data from 1,800 daughters of women who had participated in the Child Health and Development Studies, an ongoing project of the Public Health Institute.

The CHDS recruited women who sought obstetric care through Kaiser Permanente Foundation Health Plan in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1959 and 1967.

The data was originally collected to study early risk of breast cancer, which is why sons were not considered in the current study.

In previous studies, fetal exposure to cigarette smoke has also been linked to higher rates of obesity and low birth weight. This study found that birth weight did not affect whether the daughters of smoking parents developed diabetes.

“We found that smoking of parents is by itself a risk factor for diabetes, independent of obesity or birth weight,” La Merrill says. “If a parent smokes, you’re not protected from diabetes just because you’re lean.”

Source: UC Davis
Original Study

About the Author of the Study

Michele La Merrill is assistant professor of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Davis.

Disclosure Statement: The study National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the California Breast Cancer Research Program Special Research Initiative supported the research.

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