IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v9y2018i1d10.1038_s41467-018-07617-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Denny Vågerö

    (SE-106 91 Stockholm University)

  • Pia R. Pinger

    (University of Bonn
    briq, Institute on Behavior & Inequality)

  • Vanda Aronsson

    (SE-106 91 Stockholm University)

  • Gerard J. van den Berg

    (University of Bristol
    IFAU, Institute for Evaluation of Labor Market and Education Policy)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Denny Vågerö & Pia R. Pinger & Vanda Aronsson & Gerard J. van den Berg, 2018. "Paternal grandfather’s access to food predicts all-cause and cancer mortality in grandsons," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-7, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-07617-9
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07617-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07617-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-018-07617-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dora Costa, 2021. "Health Shocks of the Father and Longevity of the Children's Children," NBER Working Papers 29553, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dora Costa & CoraLee Lewis & Noelle Yetter, 2022. "Children and Grandchildren of Union Army Veterans: New Data Collections to Study the Persistence of Longevity and Socioeconomic Status Across Generations," NBER Working Papers 30747, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-07617-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.