论文标题：Paternal grandfather’s access to food predicts all-cause and cancer mortality in grandsons

期刊：Nature Communications

作者：Denny Vågerö, Pia R. Pinger, Vanda Aronsson, Gerard J. van den Berg

发表时间：2018/12/11

数字识别码： 10.1038/s41467-018-07617-9

原文链接：http://t.cn/EUi0O0c

微信链接：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/37i3OhbaX77VbbaOQ4Ut1g

《自然-通讯》本周发表的一篇论文Paternal grandfather’s access to food predicts all-cause and cancer mortality in grandsons指出，祖父辈在青春期前的缓慢生长期（9-12岁）的粮食获取与他们孙子的死亡风险有关，但对孙女没有影响。这项针对三代人的大型队列研究是对之前的研究工作的扩展，并支持一种假说——这种假说认为一代人的环境暴露可能会影响后代健康。不过，研究并未确定这一关系的潜在机制。

图1图源：Pixabay

瑞典斯德哥尔摩大学的Denny Vågerö及同事收集了瑞典乌普萨拉出生队列多代研究（Uppsala Birth Cohort Multigeneration Study）所开展地区的1874-1910年的粮食收成信息，用来估算祖辈（9039人）在其缓慢生长期获取食物的难度。通过对比他们孙代（11561人）在1961-2015年的死亡率数据，作者发现祖父们在粮食收成异常好的年份里进入缓慢生长期，与孙子的全因死亡风险以及患癌死亡风险较高有关。不过，孙女身上并未发现这一关联。

图2：三代相连。 按性别划分的G0、G1、G2三代的出生年份分布（每年出生的人数；左Y轴）和1874年至1910年间的年平均粮食收成质量（右Y轴），该期间对应G0代的缓慢生长期。图源：Vågerö等

虽然这些结果支持表观遗传跨代继承的概念，即环境暴露因素在生殖细胞中通过表观修饰跨代遗传的现象，但这些结果只能作为这一假说的间接证据。需要进一步的研究证明这些因素对生殖细胞的表观遗传标记具有直接作用，且这类标记的传递超过三代人，才能在祖父的粮食获取与他们的孙子的死亡风险之间建立直接因果关系。

摘要：Studies of animals and plants suggest that nutritional conditions in one generation may affect phenotypic characteristics in subsequent generations. A small number of human studies claim to show that pre-pubertal nutritional experience trigger a sex-specific transgenerational response along the male line. A single historical dataset, the Överkalix cohorts in northern Sweden, is often quoted as evidence. To test this hypothesis on an almost 40 times larger dataset we collect harvest data during the pre-pubertal period of grandparents (G0, n = 9,039) to examine its potential association with mortality in children (G1, n = 7,280) and grandchildren (G2, n = 11,561) in the Uppsala Multigeneration Study. We find support for the main Överkalix finding: paternal grandfather’s food access in pre-puberty predicts his male, but not female, grandchildren’s all-cause mortality. In our study, cancer mortality contributes strongly to this pattern. We are unable to reproduce previous results for diabetes and cardiovascular mortality.

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（来源：科学网）