Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Old Dads Risk Dumber Kids

Australian psychiatrist John J. McGrath and colleagues found that children of older fathers were likely to have lower IQs than children of younger fathers. Their kids were also more likely to be schizophrenic or autistic.

The children of 50 year old fathers had average IQs 6 points lower than the children of 20 year old fathers. That is half a standard deviation - a pretty substantial difference.

A woman has all her eggs at birth. They run the risk of wearing out and breaking down, which is one of the reasons that children of older mothers are more likely to have some birth defects. However, the children of older mothers did not score any lower on the intelligence measures in this study.

Sperm, on the other hand, and made continuously. It was thought that this prevented the kind of breakdown with age that eggs show. McGrath and colleagues, though, point out that there are many more steps in the copying process to produce sperm in older fathers. The sperm of 20-year-old men are the result of about 150 cell divisions; those of 50-year-old men, 840. Each division provides a new opportunity for mutation and error.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

which is one of the reasons that children of older mothers are likely to have some birth defects

I think this is a bit of a misstatement, though I suppose it depends on how you define the word "likely." When I hear "likely," I think "greater than 50% chance," and mothers over 35 (which I think is the general classification of "older mothers") certainly don't have a greater than 50% chance of having a child with birth defects.

For example, Down syndrome is the most common chromosomal defect, and a 45-year-old woman has a 3.3% chance of having a baby with Down syndrome - certainly not a statistically likely scenario, but much more likely than the 25-year-old mother who has a .08% chance of having a baby with Down syndrome.

Perhaps the phrase you meant to use was, "which is one of the reasons that children of older mothers are more likely to have some birth defects."

(See here for my statistical source.)

Gruntled said...

Yes, I had intended to write "more." I have fixed it in the main post. Thanks.