SynthesisReproductive health2021
The impact of paternal alcohol, tobacco, caffeine use and physical activity on offspring mental health: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Reproductive health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal caffeine consumption during pregnancy and offspring cord blood DNA methylation: an epigenome-wide association study meta-analysis.Epigenomics · 2023Pooled it
- What Moves Men to Change? A Mixed-Methods Study on Facilitators and Barriers of Lifestyle Changes in Men Seeking Fertility Care.Andrology · 2026Article
- Exploring parental prenatal influences on child health: A multicohort study and data visualisation tool.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Review
- Paternal peri-conceptional physical activity and the risk of congenital heart disease in offspring: A case-control study.Andrology · 2025Observational
- Maternal exacerbating and protective factors that shape the prevalence and severity of child attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a narrative review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- Paternal age, de novo mutations, and offspring health? New directions for an ageing problem.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2024Review
- Influence of substance use on male reproductive health and offspring outcomes.Nature reviews. Urology · 2024Review
- Review
- The role of fathers in child development from preconception to postnatal influences: Opportunities for the National Institutes of Health Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program.Developmental psychobiology · 2024Review
- Developmental origins of health and disease: Impact of paternal nutrition and lifestyle.Pediatric investigation · 2023Review
- Associations between health behaviours, fertility and reproductive outcomes: triangulation of evidence in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa).BMC medicine · 2023Article
- An epigenetic synopsis of parental substance use.Epigenomics · 2023Review
- The impact of exposure to tobacco smoking and maternal trauma in fetal life on risk of migraine.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Parental smoking and young adult offspring psychosis, depression and anxiety disorders and substance use disorder.European journal of public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThere is some evidence that paternal health behaviours during and around pregnancy could be associated with offspring health outcomes. However, the impact that paternal health behaviours during pregnancy can have on offspring mental health is understudied and remains unclear.
methodsWe conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of articles in PubMed describing studies of potentially modifiable paternal health behaviours (tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, caffeine consumption and physical activity) in the prenatal period in relation to offspring mental health. GRADE was used to measure risk of bias.
resultsEight studies were included and categorized by paternal health behaviour and offspring mental health outcome investigated. The narrative synthesis provided evidence of association between paternal health behaviours around pregnancy and offspring mental health problems, with the strongest evidence shown for tobacco use. Grouped by analysis type, two separate meta-analyses showed evidence of paternal smoking during pregnancy being associated with greater odds of ADHD in offspring (OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.02-1.99; HR 1.28, 95% CI 1.19-1.39).
conclusionsThe small number of studies that have investigated paternal prenatal effects on offspring mental health, and the limited sample sizes of those studies, makes it challenging to draw firm conclusions. Although existing studies suggest that paternal tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption in the prenatal period are associated with poorer offspring mental health, (particularly hyperactivity/ADHD), further investigation of potential paternal effects is required, using methods that allow stronger inference to determine whether associations are causal.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.