Overweight grandsons and grandfathers' starvation exposure

Grandchildren's Longevity and Their Grandfathers' POW Trauma in the U.S. Civil War

I document the transmission of a grandfather's net nutritional deprivation and psychosocial stress in young adulthood across multiple generations using the grandfather's ex-prisoner of war (ex-POW) status in the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). Using a newly created dataset, I uncover an association between a grandfather's ex-POW status and the longevity after age 45 of his sons and male-line grandsons but not of his daughters, granddaughters, female-line grandsons, children-in-law, or grandchildren-in-law. Male-line grandsons lost roughly a year of life at age 45 (4% of remaining life expectancy) if descended from ex-POWs who suffered severe captivity conditions than if descended from non-POWs. If their grandfathers faced a less harsh captivity, male-line grandsons lost less than a year of life compared with those descended from non-POWs. I find that the grandfather's age at exposure and the grandson's education, as well as the son's and the grandson's poor late gestational conditions (proxied by season of birth), mediate this relationship. I rule out socioeconomic status, marriage and mortality selection, and cultural or psychological transmission from grandfathers to grandsons as explanations. I cannot rule out an epigenetic explanation.

Children and Grandchildren of Union Army Veterans: New Data Collections to Study the Persistence of Longevity and Socioeconomic Status Across Generations

This paper introduces four new intergenerational and multigenerational datasets which follow both sons and daughters and which can be used to study the persistence of longevity, socioeconomic status, family structure, and geographic mobility across generations. The data follow the children of Black and White Union Army (US Civil War, 1861-5) veterans from birth to death, linking them to the available censuses. The White samples include an over-sample of children of ex-POWs. A separate collection links grandchildren of White Union Army veterans to their death records. The data were created with high quality manual linkage procedures utilizing a wide variety of records to establish links.

Paternal methamphetamine exposure differentially affects first and second generations in mice

Amphetamine-type stimulants are abused worldwide, and methamphetamine (METH) accounts for a large majority of seized abused drug cases. Recently, the paternal origin of health and disease theory has been proposed as a concept wherein paternal factors influence descendants. Although METH abuse is more common among males, its effects on their descendants were not examined. Therefore, we investigated the effects of paternal METH exposure on F1 and F2 levels in a mouse model. Sires were administered METH for 21 days and mated with female mice to obtain F1 mice. Growth evaluations (number of births, survival rate, body weight, righting reflex, cliff avoidance tests, and wire-hanging maneuver) were performed on F1 mice. Upon reaching six weeks of age, the mice were subjected to spontaneous locomotion, elevated plus-maze, acute METH treatment, and passive avoidance tests. Additionally, RNA-seq was performed on the striatum of male mice. Male F1 mice were mated with female mice to obtain F2 mice. They were subjected to the same tests as the F1 mice. Paternal METH exposure resulted in delayed growth and decreased memory function in F1 mice, overweight in F2 mice, decreased METH sensitivity, and reduced anxiety-related behaviors in female F2 mice. Enrichment analysis revealed significant enrichment of terms related to behavior in F1 and protein folding in F2. These results indicated that the effects of paternal METH exposure vary across generations. The effects of paternal factors need to be examined not only in F1, but also in F2 and beyond.