Teratogens

hoggy87

Are there chemicals that can be taken by men, pre-coitus, which can cause teratogenic effects?

Apart from carcinogens, which I assume would be teratogenic.

Thanks.

Spyral

are you trying to give someove cancer via sex ?

put benzene on your nob ! (tho has not been proved to cause cancer in humans AFAIK)

hoggy87

Spyral wrote: »

are you trying to give someove cancer via sex ?

put benzene on your nob ! (tho has not been proved to cause cancer in humans AFAIK)

Yes, yes I am. :rolleyes:
Anyway...

tallaght01

I'm certainly not aware of any proven links.

Anyone any ideas?

DrIndy

there are actually

think finasteride is one of them.....

Maybe also retinoids used in acne - but need to double check this one.......

tallaght01

I've heard of finesteride causing hypospadias in babies if taken by pregnant women....but I've never heard of this being caused by blokes taking it pre-coitally (is pre-coitally a word?).

I'll also have a look into it.

Shazbot

Spyral wrote: »

are you trying to give someove cancer via sex ?

put benzene on your nob ! (tho has not been proved to cause cancer in humans AFAIK)

Teratogenic doesn't mean cancer. It's a term used to describe substances that will harm/kill the fetous. Most teratogenic drugs/substances are only teratogenic before 11 weeks. (Not 100% sure on that though)

hoggy87

DrIndy wrote: »

there are actually

think finasteride is one of them.....

Maybe also retinoids used in acne - but need to double check this one.......

I'm fairly sure the Vit A derivatives only cause when taken by the woman - etretinate and isotretinoin, etc. I'll have a look at finasteride. Thanks.

tallaght01 wrote: »

I'll also have a look into it.

Cheers.

tallaght01

Hi Hoggy87,

I'm sure I read a review article about this subject a few years back in one of the paeds journals.

I've tried to find the reference online but can't.

From memory, most of the studies are in animal models, so it's not always easy to say the human reaction will be identical, obviously.

I think the conclusion was one of those "there's no direct evidence, but there's a suggestion that some chemicals could be teratogenic" if taken by males.

I've never seen a baby who has been definitely affected in this way, but I'll see if I can find that paper.

John

There's some evidence for cocaine having a teratogenic effect on CNS development. Here's an abstract from a study done in mice:

He et al., 2006 wrote:

The present study examined the potential neuroteratological effects of paternal cocaine (COC) exposure using the novel mouse model of inhalational drug administration. In this model, mice were trained to self-administer COC in multi-hour daily inhalation sessions reminiscent of crack binges. The controls included males pair-fed with COC-inhaling animals as well as ad-lib-fed males. All males were bred with drug-naive females. The newborn pups sired by COC-inhaling males had a reduced biparietal head diameter, suggesting a decreased cerebral volume. When the pups reached adulthood, their sustained visuo-spatial attention and spatial working memory were tested using a 5-arm maze paradigm. During the attention tests, the percentage of correct trials at the shortest stimulus duration employed in the study (0.5 s) was significantly lower for the male offspring of COC-inhaling fathers as compared to the offspring of both pair-fed and ad-lib-fed controls. For the females sired by COC-inhaling fathers, the deficit was observed at light stimulus durations of 0.5 and 0.75 s. Also, during the working memory tests, the male offspring of COC-inhaling fathers required more sessions than the offspring of either pair-fed or ad-lib-fed fathers to reach the selected criterion at retention intervals of 16 min and longer. The impairment of working memory in female offspring of COC-inhaling fathers was even stronger, as the offspring needed more sessions to reach the criterion as compared to their control counterparts, even at retention intervals as short as 4 min. These findings suggest that paternal COC abuse prior to coitus may impact the development of the offspring, particularly if they are females. We further showed that chronic COC exposure in male mice does not result in substantial breakage of spermatozoal DNA, but significantly alters expression of DNA methyltransferases 1 and 3a in the germ cell-rich seminiferous tubules of the testis. Since these enzymes are essential for generating and maintaining parental gene imprinting in germ cells, our observations point to an intriguing possibility that COC may cause paternally induced neuroteratological effects by interfering with gene-imprinting patterns in male gametes.

tallaght01

very interesting, John.

I guess what we really need to see is an epidemiological study in humans now.

But there appears to be a few animal studies like this kicking around.

It's interesting, though, that the study you've quoted has actually suggested a reason for the abnormalities, ie the effect of cocaine on DNA methyltransferases.

John

I think there have been some behavioural studies in humans in children of cocaine-using fathers. I'll have a look around for references. I've never come across anything from a more biological point of view though.