Teen Smokers Produce Heavier Sons

Fathers who smoked in their pre-teen years have been found to produce heavier sons with more average body-fat than other boy's their age, according to a new study.

The study, which was published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, a Nature publication, investigated whether the adverse influences of the toxic components in cigarette smoke proved transgenerational, like many other toxic substances had demonstrated in past studies.

In an alarmingly biblical report of sons inheriting the sins of their fathers, the results of the study showed that boys who took up a smoking habit prior to turning 11 years old wound up fathering sons later in life who displayed a greater chance of being overweight.

Using data from the long-term Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, researcher analyzed smoking habits of fathers and the BMIs of their sons over four years of adolescents.

Nearly 10,000 fathers were included in the study along with their sons. Of the fathers, 54 percent reported having been regular smokers at some point in their life, and three percent reported smoking regularly before age 11.

Interestingly, sons of smokers proved to face slightly higher risk of being overweight during teen-hood compared to the sons of non-smokers. More interesting still, the sons of men who picked up smoking in their preteen years had the highest body-mass-indexes overall between the ages 13 and 17, compared with the sons of the other 97 percent of the fathers. This meant that not only were the sons of preteen smokers heavier,  but they were also markedly more unhealthy, exhibiting a significantly higher amount of additional body-fat, compared to the other sons.

It should be noted that a cause-and-effect relationship was not established, and the study's results only showed an association between the two factors. Still, the study does show the importance of preventing underage smoking, where doing so could not only preserve the quality-of-life of those preteens, but also the heath of their children.

The study was published in the European Journal of Human Genetics on April 2.