Rare Tumors Affecting Testicles May Show Why Some Conditions Are Common in Older Fathers` Offspring
A recent study made on a rare version of a malign tumor affecting testicles gave researchers a more accurate view of how genetic transformations affect children. This investigation may shed some light in the cases of children who were conceived by older fathers and present similar health conditions.
The research was financed by the Wellcome Trust and the Danish Cancer Society. It was released in the Nature Genetics and was provided by investigators from the University of Oxford and Copenhagen University Hospital.
Genetic mutations can affect various body cells in different moments of one`s life span. Some of the transformations affect the cells that develop sperm of female eggs and may trigger mutations that burden the child. Other mutations may take place in different body cells and develop in tumors, but these types are not genetic.
This recent research studies the association between specific, rare children inherited conditions and rare tumors that affect the testicles in the case of older patients. The sperm of eggs that are the product of changed germ cells appear to be the causes of these rare testicular tumors.
Even though the first transformations seldom appear in the germ cells, they trigger the mutant tissues to increase. In the cellular division process, a cell that has a transformation in its DNA transfers this bias to all its replicas and taking into consideration the germ cells which produce sperm, these mutations are transferred to all the spermatozoids. Thus, this propensity in the sperm mutation increases in the case of older males, at the same time increasing their chances to conceive children with health conditions.
Leading the research was professor Andrew Wilkie from the University of Oxford. He stated that his team thought that older men developed mutated bundle of cells as they grew older. These bundles commonly produce no harm and may appear as moles located on the skin`s surface. However, if the mutated bundle of cells is found in the testicles it may trigger the conception of offspring who present various poor health conditions. The team of scientists entitled these bundles “selfish” due to the fact that they do not affect their host, in this case the older fathers, but bring upon a serious burden to the children conceived by these fathers.
This study aids doctors in discovering the triggering causes of some bad health conditions that interact with the offspring`s good evolution. Some of the serious health conditions that may appear due to the cellular mutations sum up Apert, Costello and Noonan syndromes, achondroplasia and even the death of the fetus inside the female`s uterus or at the moment of birth. In additions, the research also associated these diseases to a framework which controls the division of the cells. The study is more valuable as it can give the medical staff the chance to present to the parents the causes which triggered the poor health condition of their children and also make them aware of the diseases incidence risk. However, in the majority of the cases, there is a slight chance that future child conceptions would be affected by the genetic mutations.
The outcomes of the research may also shed some light in one of the greatest questions related to genetics. What is the mechanism for the genetic material to be a major element in the appearance and development of similar illnesses? Similar illnesses are triggered by a number of genes that interact with each other. However, even if doctors analyzed the relationship between the genome and these genes, a small number of them was revealed. Some of the health conditions, comprising breast malign tumors, autism and schizophrenia, appear to have an increased development risk in children who were conceived by older fathers. However, the reasons for these are not still known. Professor Andrew Wilkie states that some of these conditions may be triggered by similar but less aggressive gene transformations.
As the leading investigator explains, the research may have studied only 10% or less of the less aggressive gene transformations which are presented in the human genome. However, as he continues, the gene mutations are either too rare or too weak to be detected by nowadays technology. Nonetheless, their accurate number has a summing up effect and triggers health conditions.
The team of investigators state that additional investigations need to be done in order to discover other genes which may be affected by the mutation process. Nonetheless, the technology for sequencing the DNA has moved at a higher level and is able now to gather a wider sequence in just a day compared to what was in the past when the same amount of sequence was obtained over the time span of almost an entire year. This obsolete technology was available only ten years ago. The scientists hope that these progresses done in the DNA sequencing process would evolve with the passing of the years and enable researchers to find out the actual risk of children being affected by the genetic mutations of the germ cell from their fathers` bodies.
