Sunday, January 30, 2011

Are Advanced Paternal Age and Point Mutation at Chromosome 4 Associated With Schizophrenia

Prim Care Companion J Clin Psychiatry. 2010;12(5). pii: PCC.10l00952.

Are Advanced Paternal Age and Point Mutation at Chromosome 4 Associated With Schizophrenia?
Phutane VH, Loganathan S, Jhirwal OP, Varghese M, Jain S, Girimaji SC.

Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, School of Medicine, Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven ; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri ; Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Human Behavior and Allied Science, Delhi, India ; and Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India.

PMID: 21274353 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Male Biological Clock

The Male Biological Clock
by Jessie Agudo, Staff Writer (Ranked #6 expert in Sexual Health & Enhancement)
According to Nebraska Medical Center, ideally, fathers should finish their family by 40. It is quite risky for fathers over forty to have a child with an autosomal dominant mutation. Fathers over fifty were found to have a twenty percent greater incidence of producing a baby born with serious defects.

A research scientist has been looking into male infertility and remains unconvinced by the American findings on sperm quality.

They get men over sixty coming in for semen analysis and their sperm is no different from that of 20-year-old added the scientist. After 55, sperm numbers significantly reduce. Furthermore he takes the traditional view, maintaining that sperm quality is influenced by factors other than age. Alcohol, smoking, stress, diet, and large levels of cadmium and lead can affect sperm, Heavy alcoholics and cocaine users experience the severest drop in sperm production added research scientist.

According to studies, men are productivity better built than women, sperm are produced every minute of the day, each sperm taking 72 days to evolve. A man produces 200-400 million sperm a day- and it only needs one to fertilize an egg. This goes some way to explained why traditionally it has been more socially acceptable for men to "spread their seed"; it’s all in the name of procreation.

Author of the Rites of Man: love, sex and death in the making of the male, believes that encountering paternal death sooner rather than later makes a great deal of difference to a child. So, if the father is approaching that age, it’s likely that parental loss will occur just when the child is supposed to having the best time of her or his life. This can lead to awful emotional difficulties, apart from the understandable grief. It can result in terrible feelings of guilt and anger.

Nowadays, economic factors like money, jobs, maternity leave and child care play as even greater part in determining when is the right time to reproduce.

The older father will often become "Big Daddy", showering gifts on the daughter and spoiling her. Treating her as "his baby". The relationship will either be intensely paternalistic or lover-like. The more the older father invests in his daughter, the more difficult it will be for her daughter to become independent.

An older father only grows older and, as his daughter’s life is expanding, he is contracting. When he is post-menopausal, she is becoming a woman.

Beating the clock

Nowadays, economic factors like jobs, maternity leave, money and child care play an even greater part in determining when it is right time to reproduce. As women, it can be galling to feel there is a further pressing factor: the biological clock. The facts that biology may not be so favorable to men either is one that, curiously, has been all but ignored up to now. According to psychology adviser, as long as women are conscious of their biological clock, while men regard themselves as immune, this will remain a potential source of conflict and of women’s resentment. But if men start to become more conscious of their own internal ticking the two sexes will gain understanding of each other.

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Resource: Woman Today

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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Paternal age and common mental disorders.

World J Biol Psychiatry. 2009;10(4 Pt 2):518-23.

Paternal age and common mental disorders.
Krishnaswamy S, Subramaniam K, Indran H, Ramachandran P, Indran T, Indran R, Aziz JA.

Department of Psychiatry, Penang Medical College, Penang, Malaysia. Saroja54@hotmail.com

Abstract
INTRODUCTION: There is evidence in the literature that there are associations between advancing paternal age and psychosis or more specifically schizophrenia, but not enough to support a strong link between advancing paternal age and common mental disorders.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explain the association between paternal age at birth and common mental disorders in progeny during their adulthood.

METHODOLOGY: This is a sub-study from a larger survey which was planned to study the epidemiology of mental disorders in Malaysia. Respondents who could remember the age of parents at birth were included in the study. The diagnosis of common mental disorders (CMD) was made using the CIS-R (Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised) instrument in the PROQSY (Programmed Questionnaire System) format. Association between paternal age at birth and CMD was studied using logistic regression, after controlling for age, gender, ethnicity and presence of family history of mental disorders.

RESULTS: Respondents with paternal age at birth of 19 and below and 50 above and had higher rates of 10 and 25% for common mental disorders (chi(2)=7.007, P=0.072) with odds ratios of 2.89 (95% CI of OR = 1.1-7.6) and 4.28 (1.4-12.7).

DISCUSSION: Progenies of fathers under 20 and over 50 had higher risk for mental disorders. Factors such as immaturity in sperm of teenage fathers, mutation in germ line of older fathers, environmental and psychosocial factors could have contributed to increased prevalence of common mental disorders in the progeny.

PMID: 19191074 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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Delayed fathering and risk of mental disorders in adult offspring.

Early Hum Dev. 2011 Jan 8. [Epub ahead of print]

Delayed fathering and risk of mental disorders in adult offspring.
Krishnaswamy S, Subramaniam K, Ramachandran P, Indran T, Abdul Aziz J.

University of New England, Locked bag 4, NSW 2351, Australia.

Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Delayed parenting and child bearing at a very young age impose various risks to development of the offspring.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate the association between disparities in parental age and increased risk factor for common mental disorders in the progenies during adulthood.

METHODOLOGY: The Malaysian Mental Health Survey (MMHS) was analysed for this study. Respondents were asked to estimate the age of their parents at their birth. Presence of common mental disorders (CMD) was determined by referring to the diagnosis given by the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised (CIS-R) instrument in the Programmed Questionnaire System (PROQSY) format. The association between parental age disparities and CMD was studied using logistic regression.

RESULT: Fifty three percent (n=1972) of the MMHS respondents (N=3666) knew the age of both parents and were included in the study. Three percent (n=53) had significant disparity in parental age, or a difference of 11years or more. Respondents born to parents with significant age disparity had a prevalence rate of 24% (95% CI=22.12-25.89) for CMD in comparison to 6% (95% CI=5.99-6.11) in their counterparts and 3.4 times higher risk for CMD, after adjusting for demographic factors, paternal age at birth and presence of family history of mental disorders. Amongst those born to older fathers aged 50 and above, the presence of disparity increased the rate for CMD to 42% (95% CI=39.82-44.18).

DISCUSSION: Disparity in parental age was significantly associated with increased risk for CMD. Various psychosocial factors contributing to age disparity in both the father and the mother could predispose to stress and mental health problems.

Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, January 06, 2011

Prader- Willi syndrome A genetic defect seen in advanced paternal age offspring

Indian J Hum Genet. 2010 Sep;16(3):172-4.

Prader-Willi syndrome: Methylation study or fluorescence in situ hybridization first?
Hamzi K, Itto AB, Nassereddine S, Nadifi S.

Laboratory of Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Casablanca, Morocco.

Abstract
Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is neurogenetic disorder involving the imprinting mechanism at 15q11-13 region. We report a 4-year-old girl who was referred to our laboratory to be investigated for clinical obesity, mental deficiency and respiratory problems. The patient was born for non-consanguineous and healthy biological parents. After normal pregnancy, the patient was delivered by cesarean section at full term, with a birth weight of 2500 g, and the height and head circumference were unknown. In neonatal stage, she presented severe hypotonia with feeding problems. Her developmental progress was delayed. She walked and developed speech at the age of 3 years. Since the age of 3 years, she presented severe dental problems. Methylation study had confirmed the diagnosis, and for detecting etiology, fluorescence in situ hybridization using probes for small nuclear ribonucleoprotein polypeptide N (SNRPN), which map inside the chromosomal region 15q11-15q13, was necessary to confirm the 15q11-15q13 deletion of paternal chromosome 15, which is the predominant genetic defect in PWS. In conclusion, we report this case with an objective to reinforce the necessity of analysis of DNA methylation within the 15q11-13 region, which is an important tool for the correct diagnosis among children presenting with neonatal hypotonia, mental deficiency and obesity.

PMID: 21206709 [PubMed - in process]

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