Multiple Sclerosis and Paternal Age

Parental Age, Family Size, and Risk of Multiple Sclerosis.

Original Article

Epidemiology. 15(6):717-723, November 2004.
Montgomery, Scott M. *+; Lambe, Mats ++; Olsson, Tomas [S]; Ekbom, Anders *++
Abstract

Methods: Using the Swedish Inpatient Register, we identified 4443 patients with a diagnosis of MS. From the general Swedish population, using birth and death registers, we selected 24,194 controls with similar characteristics for year, county of birth, and survival until at least age at diagnosis of the matched cases. The Multi-Generation Register linked data on siblings and parents. The Census provided father's social class based on occupation.

. The risk of MS increased steadily with father's age but not mother's age, up to 2.00 (1.35-2.96) for 51- to 55-year-old fathers (compared with 21- to 25-year-old fathers).

Conclusions: Parents who have offspring with MS may have subtly impaired fertility. The unexpected association with paternal age may be the result of an increased risk of accumulating germ cell mutations among older males.