Does male alcohol abuse affect the child at conception?

[Fighter]

I am a new reader and find your information extremely interesting to say the least. I do have a question though, that does not seem to have been answered yet. It concerns alcoholism and its effects on children from conception through adolescence. I know it is well documented that a mother that is drunk all the time will cause her unborn child to be harmed and the resulting condition post birth is termed “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome”. But,

What if the father is a long term alcoholic?

       Does his alcoholism alter his genetic code in a way so to harm the fetus at conception? What are the long term effects of the father’s alcoholism on the child (besides maybe his still being in the child’s life and exposing it to all the wonders of living with a drunk.)? I have seen a pattern of such cases with resulting effects and wonder what you can turn up.

[Diceman]

Welcome to the board.

Nothing can alter your genetic code and leave you alive to worry about it (unless you’re a character on Star Trek, of course )

I’ve heard that chronic alcohol abuse can lower a man’s sperm count, but that would affect his chances of conception, not the health of the child.

I would say that by far the biggest problem for the kid is the fact that his parents are drunks.

[SandyHook]

My, limited, understanding of this area is that for the most part sperm that has been damaged in any form generally has a difficult time making it to the egg to do any fertilizing. Something of the same happens to damaged eggs. They could be dripping in sperm but it ain’t gonna do them no good. If either part is broken, conception isn’t likely.

That’s “not likely” not impossibe. Damaged eggs and sperm can be fertilized but I think it’s very rare.

The problem with alcohol in the mother’s blood stream in the weeks after conception is that it gets across the placential barrier and into the dividing egg. There it causes errors which lead to serious problems.

It’s the alcohol after conception that’s the problem.

Daddy, on the other hand, can get as drunk as he wants and just continue to watch the ball game.

[Evil_Captor]

Alcohol abuse at conception tends to lower the standards of both sexes re: who they’re conceiving with, so in a sense, yes.

[Shade]

*Originally posted by Diceman *
Nothing can alter your genetic code and leave you alive to worry about it (unless you’re a character on Star Trek, of course )

Well, technically, a cosmic ray (no, seriously, startrek didn’t make that one up!) in the right place would could alter the DNA in one cell, possibly causing a cancer, or if it alters the DNA in a sperm, creating a mutated child.

What’s impossible is that all your DNA is changed, or that if it is, you’re anything but dead.

But I don’t think that alcohol would have any such affect.

[Desmostylus]

Alcohol and the Male Reproductive System (2001)

EFFECTS OF PATERNAL ALCOHOL EXPOSURE ON THE REPRODUCTIVE AXIS

Few studies have addressed the effects of the male parent’s alcohol use on his reproductive ability and his offspring’s health (Bielawski and Abel 1997; Abel 1995). As a model of teenage drinking, researchers have studied the effects of alcohol exposure on peripubertal male rats. This research demonstrated the deleterious effects of paternal alcohol consumption on the offspring. Two months of alcohol feeding to male animals as they progressed through puberty resulted in their having lower body weights and reduced testosterone levels, compared with animals that did not receive alcohol. Despite this, after a 1-week abstinence from alcohol, those animals were able to successfully mate, although successful mating resulting in conception (i.e., fecundity) was significantly reduced and the number of successful pregnancies was diminished.

Although the litter size of the alcohol-exposed males was reduced by 46 percent, the average individual weight of the pup offspring of paternally alcohol-exposed animals was higher. The male-to-female pup ratio also was altered, with a higher preponderance of male offspring from alcohol-fed fathers. No gross malformations were noted among the pups.

Paternal testicular oxidative injury was increased, however, as demonstrated by enhanced lipid peroxidation. Germ cell apoptosis also was elevated in alcohol-exposed fathers (Emanuele et al. 2001). Therefore, it appears that chronic alcohol exposure in the peripubertal age group decreases fecundity, which may be mediated by testicular oxidative injury, leading to accelerated germ cell apoptosis in alcohol-exposed fathers. This is another exciting area for further investigation.

[Iteki]

I asked the same question about 2 years back, and hedra offered this link.
http://www.fasalaska.com/DadsBirthDefects.html

[aerodave]

REPRODUCTIVE AXIS, huh? I may have to use that one in the future.

[Fighter]

I do apreciate all the info that has been offered. I am a pre med student and am buried in reports on subjects like this one and need many different views to give a more rounded report.
What I have been able to find so far from the links provided here and some I have turned up on my own is that male alcohol consumption does indeed cause detrimental

[Desmostylus]

…effects on the ability to finish sentences?

[Fighter]

I do apreciate all the info that has been offered. I am a pre med student and am buried in reports on subjects like this one and need many different views to give a more rounded report.
What I have been able to find so far from the links provided here and some I have turned up on my own is that male alcohol consumption does indeed cause detrimental changes to the male DNA carried by sperm. Alcohol has been proven to be both a mutagen and a terotagen. Alcohol can even travel with the ejaculate and damage the egg at conception. All this leads to several severe problems like Increased incidents of Luekemia, Brain cancer, and, like FAS induced by the mother’s alcohol abuse, facial deformities. There is also a higher risk of behavioural problems like hyperactivity and deficits in intellectual developement including lower cognitive developement. A child born to an alcoholic father is more likely to be an alcoholic himself even if the child is adopted by a non alcoholic family. There is also evidense that male alcohol abuse leads to elevated risks of mental retardation of the child. A mans alcohol binge 3 months prior to conception can still lead to these and other deformities in the child. The only benefit I have found is that in the chronic male alcohol abuser, his ability to perform the sex act is severely reduced as well as the ability to actually concieve (the lower testosterone levels caused by alcohol abuse cause the abusers to have less drive to copulate too). While there is much research to be undertaken in this field yet, these are the leading problems that have so far been identified.