ArticleMolecular psychiatry2024
Epigenetic changes in sperm are associated with paternal and child quantitative autistic traits in an autism-enriched cohort.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Asperger Traits as a Conditionally Adaptive Neurocognitive Phenotype: An Evolutionary Narrative Review.Cureus · 2026Review
- Associations among maternal prenatal depression, maternal autism traits, and child autism traits in the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcome (ECHO) program.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2026Article
- Perinatal exposure to gaseous pollutants and autism spectrum disorder in children: A nested case-control study in the nurses' health study ii cohort.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2026Article
- Nutrition-Based Paternal Influence on Gynecological Diseases in Female Offspring via Epigenetic Mechanisms.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Radiation effects research foundation-a view to the future.Carcinogenesis · 2025Article
- Genetic regulation of sperm DNA methylation in cattle through meQTL mapping.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Beyond Genes: Mechanistic and Epidemiological Insights into Paternal Environmental Influence on Offspring Health.Current environmental health reports · 2025Review
- Does the risk of neurodevelopment disorders in children differ with different ART treatments? A systematic review and meta-analysis.Pakistan journal of medical sciences · 2025Article
- Preconception, prenatal and early childhood exposure to green space and risk of neurodevelopmental delays: a national cohort study among Medicaid enrollees.Environment international · 2025Article
- Advanced Paternal Age in Focus: Unraveling Its Influence on Assisted Reproductive Technology Outcomes.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Exposure to air pollution is associated with DNA methylation changes in sperm.Environmental epigenetics · 2024Article
- Intercontinental insights into autism spectrum disorder: a synthesis of environmental influences and DNA methylation.Environmental epigenetics · 2024Review
- A novel hypothesis-generating approach for detecting phenotypic associations using epigenetic data.Epigenomics · 2024Article
- Investigating the impact of paternal aging on murine sperm miRNA profiles and their potential link to autism spectrum disorder.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Male reproductive ageing: a radical road to ruin.Human reproduction (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
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9 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
There is a need to consider paternal contributions to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) more strongly. Autism etiology is complex, and heritability is not explained by genetics alone. Understanding paternal gametic epigenetic contributions to autism could help fill this knowledge gap. In the present study, we explored whether paternal autistic traits, and the sperm epigenome, were associated with autistic traits in children at 36 months enrolled in the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation (EARLI) cohort. EARLI is a pregnancy cohort that recruited and enrolled pregnant women in the first half of pregnancy who already had a child with ASD. After maternal enrollment, EARLI fathers were approached and asked to provide a semen specimen. Participants were included in the present study if they had genotyping, sperm methylation data, and Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) score data available. Using the CHARM array, we performed genome-scale methylation analyses on DNA from semen samples contributed by EARLI fathers. The SRS-a 65-item questionnaire measuring social communication deficits on a quantitative scale-was used to evaluate autistic traits in EARLI fathers (n = 45) and children (n = 31). We identified 94 significant child SRS-associated differentially methylated regions (DMRs), and 14 significant paternal SRS-associated DMRs (fwer p < 0.05). Many child SRS-associated DMRs were annotated to genes implicated in ASD and neurodevelopment. Six DMRs overlapped across the two outcomes (fwer p < 0.1), and, 16 DMRs overlapped with previous child autistic trait findings at 12 months of age (fwer p < 0.05). Child SRS-associated DMRs contained CpG sites independently found to be differentially methylated in postmortem brains of individuals with and without autism. These findings suggest paternal germline methylation is associated with autistic traits in 3-year-old offspring. These prospective results for autism-associated traits, in a cohort with a family history of ASD, highlight the potential importance of sperm epigenetic mechanisms in autism.
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