Women have higher diabetes, cancer risk if mother smoked while pregnant

Women have a higher risk of diabetes in adulthood if their parents used to smoke during pregnancy, according to a new study that gives more evidence on how prenatal environmental chemical exposures can contribute to adult diabetes mellitus. Other recent studies also linked smoking during pregnancy with cancer risk for daughters.

“From a public health perspective, reduced fetal environmental tobacco smoke exposure appears to be an important modifiable risk factor for diabetes mellitus in offspring,” said lead study author Michele La Merrill, assistant professor at the University of California.

“Medical doctors should consider advising pregnant smokers that emerging research suggests that tobacco smoking cessation in the home may benefit offspring by reducing their risk of developing diabetes mellitus independent of the effects of adult body mass index or birth weight on diabetes risk,” she added.

The team of researchers studied 1,801 diabetic daughters between the ages of 44 and 54 years who were born between 1959 and 1967 and found that when mothers had reported parental tobacco smoking during an early pregnancy interview, the daughters developed diabetes mellitus. The findings also show that prenatal smoking by the mothers had a stronger association with the daughter’s diabetes risk than prenatal smoking by the fathers.

A different research by a team of scientists in Australia recently showed that women who smoke while pregnant have daughters with an earlier age of first menstruation and this increases the risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer later in life. According to Lead researcher Dr Alison Behie from The Australian National University, reaching menarche at an earlier age increases the number of ovulation cycles a woman will have in her life, and puts her at greater risk of developing reproductive cancers possibly due to increased exposure to hormones such as oestrogen.

Smoking during pregnancy is usually linked to a number of health risks for children including reduced birth weight, reduced lung capacity, asthma and obesity, but is not commonly linked with the development of reproductive cancers later in life.