Abstract
We study whether paternal trauma is transmitted to the children of survivors of Confederate prisoner of war (POW) camps during the US Civil War (1861–1865) to affect their longevity at older ages, the mechanisms behind this transmission, and the reversibility of this transmission. We examine children born after the war who survived to age 45, comparing children whose fathers were non-POW veterans and ex-POWs imprisoned in very different camp conditions. We also compare children born before and after the war within the same family by paternal ex-POW status. The sons of ex-POWs imprisoned when camp conditions were at their worst were 1.11 times more likely to die than the sons of non-POWs and 1.09 times more likely to die than the sons of ex-POWs when camp conditions were better. Paternal ex-POW status had no impact on daughters. Among sons born in the fourth quarter, when maternal in utero nutrition was adequate, there was no impact of paternal ex-POW status. In contrast, among sons born in the second quarter, when maternal nutrition was inadequate, the sons of ex-POWs who experienced severe hardship were 1.2 times more likely to die than the sons of non-POWs and ex-POWs who fared better in captivity. Socioeconomic effects, family structure, father-specific survival traits, and maternal effects, including quality of paternal marriages, cannot explain our findings. While we cannot rule out fully psychological or cultural effects, our findings are most consistent with an epigenetic explanation.
Funder
HHS | National Institutes of Health
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Reference53 articles.
1. Barker D (1992) Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Disease (British Medical Publishing Group, London).
2. Barker D (1994) Mothers, Babies, and Disease in Later Life (British Medical Publishing Group, London).
3. Lumey L van Poppel F (2013) The Dutch famine of 1944-45 as a human laboratory: Changes in the early life environment and adult health. Early Life Nutrition and Adult Health and Development, eds Lumey L, Vaiserman, A (Nova Science Publishers, Hauppage, UK), pp 59–76. Available at https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=37892. Accessed July 1, 2018.
4. Transgenerational effects of prenatal exposure to the 1944-45 Dutch famine
5. Persistent epigenetic differences associated with prenatal exposure to famine in humans;Heijmans;Proc Natl Acad Sci USA,2008
Cited by
64 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献