Cigarette smoking during pregnancy affects the baby’s DNA

If you were looking for another reason to eliminate cigarettes during pregnancy, here it is.
A new study published in The American Journal of Human Genetics  highlights that the alterations in the DNA of children born to smoking mothers mirror those present in adults who use cigarettes.

Therefore, due to smoking during pregnancy, children would be born who have a history of smoking at the DNA level. Not very reassuring right?

The researchers analyzed data from mothers and their newborn babies to see how cigarette smoking in pregnancy can affect DNA methylation.
When women smoke every day during pregnancy, the researchers found 6,073 locations where the DNA of the babies is methylated differently from the DNA of infants born to non-smoking mothers.

DNA methylation, explained very simply, is a mechanism involved in the expression of genes. Recent studies have shown that it may play an important role in the development of tumors.
Many of the differences in methylation have been found either near genes implicated in the development of the nervous system and lungs, or near genes related to smoking-related cancers, or near genes related to defects such as cleft lip and cleft palate.

It has long been known that smoking cigarettes during pregnancy is harmful and this study provides further evidence: already at birth, children of smoking mothers show signs of methylation found in adult smokers.

And this is definitely worrying as well as penalizing the future health of the child.

The data was collected from studies done around the world and concern 6685 women with their babies. Most of the women participating in the research said they did not smoke, but about 13% of the women were daily smokers during pregnancy and another 25% admitted to having smoked on an occasional basis during pregnancy.

To analyze the methylation patterns of the newborns’ DNA, the researchers collected samples mainly from umbilical cord blood, just after birth. In addition to documenting differences between infants of nonsmokers and infants of regular smokers, the researchers examined a small group of older children and found that at least some of the methylation differences related to smoking in pregnancy persisted over the years. This is to  demonstrate the long-term effects of smoking during pregnancy on the baby.

While the study did not prove how the mother’s smoking might affect child development or disease, the findings suggest that DNA methylation may be implicated in the appearance of certain birth defects in children born to smoking mothers.

According to some scholars it could also be possible that a cellular adaptation mechanism is triggered to adapt to the changes caused by smoking, thus allowing to cope with negative affects.

The latter are obviously hypotheses that still need to be proved. However, what is known for sure by now is that smoking during pregnancy is bad for the baby and this study only reinforces this evidence, also placing the emphasis on the long-term negative effects.

I know that breaking this habit is very difficult but try to focus on the health of the child. Were you unable to stop before conception? Throw away your cigarettes now: quitting smoking during pregnancy is always better than continuing to do so.