Older Dads Have Healthier Kids Than You Think

摘要

Older fathers often get blamed for passing on genetic mutations to their children, causing some types of autism, schizophrenia, and other disorders. But new data presented at the meeting suggest that children of older fathers and grandfathers may inherit at least one advantage from aging patriarchs: longer telomeres, structures at the tips of chromosomes that may protect against aging and disease. And the effect is amplified over the generations: "We've shown that the paternal grandfather's age is associated with longer telomeres in his grandchildren," graduate student Dan Eisenberg of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, reported in a talk.