It has long been known that women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have children with respiratory and even asthmatic problems. Some studies even indicate that the harmful effects of tobacco during pregnancy can reach the second generation, that is, the grandchildren of the smoking woman.
A new study has concluded that the effect goes even further, since it has concluded that smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of asthma and other chronic lung disorders in the third generation of their offspring, that is, in the children of their grandchildren, who are their great-grandchildren (not great-grandchildren).
Study Data
The study has been carried out at the Biomedical Research Institute of Los Angeles, in the United States, and it has found that a phenomenon known as transgenerational link, in which the descendants suffer risks of specific diseases without having been exposed to the causes, that is, without having been there where there was nicotine or smoke.
Obviously, the fact that a child is asthmatic depends on many other things, such as the environment in which they live, if their parents smoke, if they smoked during pregnancy, if there is a history of asthmatic relatives, etc., but it is curious and makes one think that The effect of a pregnancy with tobacco may affect children born many decades later, such as the children of our children's children.
In the words of Dr. Virender K. Rehan, one of the authors of the study:
Eliminating tobacco use during pregnancy could help stop the increase in the incidence of childhood asthma and ensure the arrival of healthier children for the next generations.
If you wonder how this might happen, how the fact that a woman smokes can affect her great-grandchildren, tell them that when an pregnant woman smokes there is an epigenetic alteration. Nicotine not only affects the baby's lung cells, but also to sex cells. When this alteration occurs, the future lung and sexual cells that come from the already altered sexual cells will also be altered, producing the passage of genetic modification from one generation to the next.
Is this research any use?
The question now is to know if this research is of any use. If knowing what we know, if recommending to mothers who quit smoking and parents who smoke, their partners, to quit too, and there are still pregnant women who smoke and couples who do not support the cause by not quitting, if there are still mothers and Parents smoking in front of their children, with their children getting angry at smoking in front of them, little will change people to learn that the tobacco smoked in the current pregnancy will affect their great-grandchildren.
In any case, it is good to know, because it is still interesting and important information about to what extent tobacco can affect us and others, managing to remain altering cells for decades and generations. Very strong.
