As several older Hollywood actors, including Al Pacino, 83, and Robert De Niro, 79, announce they are becoming fathers, health experts warn that older fathers may potentially pose a health risk to their kids.
Despite the low likelihood, a study in the international journal of midlife health Maturitas suggested that children of men over the age of 45 could have “birth defects” and “childhood autism.”.
Since the time of the Bible, older men have given birth. It is not a recent occurrence. What we didn’t realize was that they might be producing children who are more likely to have issues, said Arthur Caplan, a professor of medical ethics at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, to NBC News.
According to a different study that was published in the National Library of Medicine, the older a father is, the more likely it is that his children will develop congenital illnesses like heart defects and mental health conditions like autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, low IQ, and ADHD.
According to the study, men also lose fertility as they age, just like women do. While older women struggle with issues that affect ovulation, men struggle to produce “quality” sperm, which could result in genetic abnormalities in the unborn child. The child may eventually develop cancers like breast cancer and a common type of childhood leukemia as a result of these mutations.
Dr. Gloria Bachmann, associate dean for women’s health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, told NBC News that men “should be aware that they, too, go through the same reproductive aging cycle as women, despite the fact that they don’t have menopause.”. ”.
Furthermore, this might have an impact on expectant mothers.
According to the Maturitas study, women carrying the child may be at an increased risk for pregnancy complications like gestational diabetes, intrauterine growth restriction, and an increased risk of the baby being born prematurely.
According to researcher Dr. Michael Eisenberg of Stanford University School of Medicine, “the absolute risk does remain relatively low.”. “For one person, it might not have the same significance. But if we examine societal changes such as parents living longer, it is undeniable that there may be a measurable rise in some of these disorders on a population level. ”.
He told the publication that, on average, every year, men add two mutations to the DNA of their sperm, which is why the likelihood that their offspring will have a genetic disorder rises as they get older.
On Thursday, PEOPLE reported that Pacino was expecting his fourth child overall and the first child he would have with girlfriend Noor Alfallah. Gia Virginia Chen De Niro, a girl, was the seventh child born to De Niro and girlfriend Tiffany Chen, who made the announcement in a sit-down interview with ET Canada last week.
