The second-hand effects of smoking ripple out, a piece of smoking 101 that travel nurses know well. According to a new study, men who smoke before the conception a child may put their children at increased risk for asthma.
After examining the smoking habits of more than 13,000 men and women, researchers looked at the rates of asthma in their children. The study, which was presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Munich, was the first of its kind to analyze the link between a father's smoking habits before conception and a child's asthma.
The results indicated that asthma was much more common among children whose fathers were smokers prior to conception – even if the man quit years before the birth. Rates of non-allergic asthma, or asthma without hayfever, were significantly higher among smoking fathers. What's more, the longer the father smoked, the higher the child's risk, and a child's chances of developing asthma rose even further if the father smoked before age 15.
"This study is important as it is the first study looking at how a father's smoking habit pre-conception can affect the respiratory health of his children," Dr. Cecile Svanes of the University of Bergen in Norway said in a European Lung Foundation news release.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence on epigenetics that suggests poor health habits can be recorded in a man's sperm or a woman's eggs. Travel nursing professionals should be tasked with warning men about how their lifestyle can affect their future children.
"Given these results, we can presume that exposure to any type of air pollution, from occupational exposures to chemical exposures, could also have an effect," Svanes added. "It is important for policymakers to focus on interventions targeting young men and warning them of the dangers of smoking and other exposures to their unborn children in the future."
Researchers pointed out that though the data highlighted an association between a man's smoking history and asthma risk in his children, it did not prove cause and effect. And perhaps shockingly, no link was found between a mother being a smoker prior to conception and a child's risk of asthma, the study found.
Similar to how obesity and other lifestyle factors can be passed on to the next generation, fathers and mothers can make a baby "pre-programmed" for a life of worse health. This underlines the concept that parenting starts before conception.