Research
Hormonal
Paternal obesity and poor nutrition can transmit metabolic disease risk to offspring through epigenetic modifications in sperm (DNA methylation and microRNA), affecting the health of the F1 and potentially F2 generations.
Men planning to have children should maintain a healthy weight and diet before conception. This can reduce the risk of passing on metabolic disease risks to their children via epigenetic mechanisms.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
paternal obesity has been shown to be associated with IGF2 hypomethylation in newborns... Diet-induced paternal obesity modulated sperm microRNA content and germ methylation status which are potential signals that program offspring health and initiate the transmission of obesity to future generations.
Why this rating
Evidence is strong in animal models, but human data is less consistent and transgenerational transmission to F3 is debated.
Source
Early Life Nutrition, Epigenetics and Programming of Later Life Disease
Mark H. Vickers · Nutrients · 2014
DOI 10.3390/nu6062165
narrative_reviewCited 359×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Early life nutritional environments (maternal undernutrition, high fat, or obesity) induce persistent epigenetic modifications (DNA methylation, histone changes) in offspring, programming them for increased risk of metabolic disorders, insulin resistance, and obesity in later life.Good
- Maternal dietary supplementation with methyl donors (folate, choline, vitamin B12) can prevent or reverse epigenetic modifications caused by low-protein or obesogenic diets in offspring, normalizing gene expression related to metabolism.Good
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