Is your arthritis passed on from your parents?
Possibly, says a new study published in the journal Aging and Disease.
However, it is not passed on genetically, but in another very strange way—and only if your parents made one crucial mistake.
Researchers from the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences wondered what types of cell damage were caused by excessive alcohol use, and they found out a lot more than they expected.
The study used a mouse model to examine the effects of alcohol consumption in parents on their offspring. They looked at several markers of aging and cellular division.
At the cellular level, aging happens when cells can no longer divide, which makes them dysfunctional.
This often happens because of mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria, often called the cell’s “powerhouses” are critical for energy production. When they don’t work properly, cells don’t have enough energy to divide and fulfill their functions.
This is the type of damage that the researchers found during this study.
Let’s have a look at the data.
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1. Adult offspring of alcohol-consuming parents exhibited significant markers of accelerated aging.
2. These mice had massive mitochondrial dysfunction, including a reduced NAD+/NADH ratio, which is vital for energy production and cellular health.
3. A process that protects cells against aging, called NAD+-dependent deacetylases SIRT1 and SIRT3, was also changed.
4. Signs of stress-induced premature cellular deterioration were present everywhere, but especially in their livers and brains.
5. These effects were observed well into the offspring’s middle age (approximately 300 days in mouse years, roughly 40–50 years in humans).
6. The premature aging happened not only in adults with maternal alcohol use but also strangely in those where the fathers consumed excessive alcohol.
Osteoarthritis is usually age-related, often called “wear and tear” arthritis. The cartilage in our joints gradually breaks down as we age.
But, if the cellular deterioration in our cartilage happens because of defective cells passed on by our parents’ lifestyle choices, the effects are precisely the same, just at far younger ages for us.