Historically, research into congenital defects has focused on maternal impacts on the fetal genome during gestation and prenatal periods. However, recent findings have sparked interest in epigenetic alterations of paternal genomes and its effects on offspring. This emergent field focuses on how environmental influences can epigenetically alter gene expression and ultimately change the phenotype...

Our aims were to investigate whether men who fathered small for gestational age (SGA) infants themselves had lower birthweight, were more likely to be obese, have central adiposity and elevated blood pressure in adult life compared with men who fathered non-SGA infants. A total of 2,002 couples participating in the Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints (SCOPE) study were enrolled in early pregnancy...

AIM The paper presents a study concerning perception of relationship between parents, attachment patterns between adolescents and parents and their influence on intensity of psychopathology symptoms in nonclinical adolescent women. METHOD The study examined 75 nonclinical women in late adolescent (17-19 years old). Participants completed Parental Bonding Instrument, Youth Self Report Form and...

Abstract Pregnancy constitutes an immunological paradox, where despite the competent maternal immune system, semi-allogeneic fetus evades rejection. The mechanisms at maternal-fetal interface and mother’s secondary lymphoid tissues (SLTs) that dodge immunologic attack to fetus, remain largely unknown. Passage of extracellular vesicles (EVs) is a mechanism cell-to-cell communication transfer ant...

Oxytocin (OT) plays a crucial role in parental-infant bonding and attachment. Recent functional imaging studies reveal specific attachment and reward related brain regions in individuals or within the parent-child dyad. However, the time course and functional stage of modulatory effects of OT on attachment-related processing, especially in fathers, are poorly understood. To elucidate the functi...

The Dio3 gene, which encodes for the type 3 deiodinase (D3), controls thyroid hormone (TH) availability. The lack of D3 in mice results in tissue overexposure to TH and a broad neuroendocrine phenotype. Dio3 is an imprinted gene, preferentially expressed from the paternally inherited allele in the mouse fetus. However, heterozygous mice with paternal inheritance of the inactivating Dio3 mutatio...