Academic Unit of Population and Lifespan Sciences, School of Medicine, Queen's Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, UK.
Proc Nutr Soc. 2022 May;81(2):119-125. doi: 10.1017/S0029665121003736. Epub 2021 Oct 27.
The association between maternal metabolic status at the time of conception and subsequent embryogenesis and offspring development has been studied in detail. However, less attention has been given to the significance of paternal nutrition and metabolism in directing offspring health. Despite this disparity, emerging evidence has begun to highlight an important connection between paternal metabolic well-being, semen quality, embryonic development and ultimately adult offspring health. This has established a new component within the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis. Building on the decades of understanding and insight derived from the numerous models of maternal programming, attention is now becoming focused on defining the mechanisms underlying the links between paternal well-being, post-fertilisation development and offspring health. Understanding how the health and fitness of the father impact on semen quality is of fundamental importance for providing better information to intending fathers. Furthermore, assisted reproductive practices such as fertilisation rely on our ability to select the best quality sperm from a diverse and heterogeneous population. With considerable advances in sequencing capabilities, our understanding of the molecular and epigenetic composition of the sperm and seminal plasma, and their association with male metabolic health, has developed dramatically over recent years. This review will summarise our current understanding of how a father's metabolic status at the time of conception can affect sperm quality, post-fertilisation embryonic and fetal development and offspring health.
人们已经详细研究了受孕时母体代谢状态与随后的胚胎发生和后代发育之间的关系。然而，人们对父体营养和代谢在指导后代健康方面的重要性关注较少。尽管存在这种差异，但新出现的证据开始强调父体代谢健康、精液质量、胚胎发育，以及最终成年后代健康之间的重要联系。这在健康与疾病的发育起源假说中建立了一个新的组成部分。在基于母体编程的众多模型得出的数十年的理解和深入认识的基础上，人们现在开始关注确定父体健康、受精后发育和后代健康之间联系的机制。了解父亲的健康和健身状况如何影响精液质量对于向准父亲提供更好的信息至关重要。此外，辅助生殖实践，如受精，依赖于我们从多样化和异质的人群中选择最佳质量精子的能力。近年来，随着测序能力的巨大进步，我们对精子和精浆的分子和表观遗传组成及其与男性代谢健康的关联的理解有了显著的发展。这篇综述将总结我们目前对父体在受孕时的代谢状态如何影响精子质量、受精后胚胎和胎儿发育以及后代健康的理解。
