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Cigarettes may trigger prenatal gene changes, leading to lifelong health problems, study suggests
Jump to full article: HealthDay [HealthScout], 2009-08-31
Intro: Women who smoke while pregnant increase their unborn child's long-term risk for health problems, including childhood asthma, cardiovascular disease and lower pulmonary function, and a new study may help experts understand why.
Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) found that maternal smoking actually changes the unborn child's DNA patterns.
The new study found that fetal exposure to maternal smoking was linked to differences in DNA methylation, an epigenetic mechanism.
Epigenetics is the study of how chemicals that attach to DNA can switch genes on and off, which leads to differences in gene expression without changing basic genetic information, according to background information in a USC news release about the study.
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