Older Fathers Linked to Disorders in Newborns

Children conceived by older men are more likely to suffer from psychological and developmental problems, according to a new study.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry, provides evidence that indicates that advancing paternal age is associated with increased risk of numerous learning disabilities, depression, bi-polar disorder, and schizophrenia.

For decades women, have been warned not to wait to have children for too long because the closer they get to having menopause, the more likely it is that there will be difficulties getting pregnant and potential complications during birth. After menopause, of course, women can no longer have children, which means that women only have a limited amount of time -- a biological clock, if you will -- to have a child. Because men do not go through menopause, it has been thought that a healthy male can have father a child at any age.

However, researchers from Indiana University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden are arguing that men have a sort of biological clock of their own.

Looking at the family and medical records of more than two million children born between 1973 and 2001, researchers discovered that children born to men 45 years old or older were 13 times more likely to have attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), than children born to a man 24 years old or younger. The same children were twice as likely to have dropped out of school early and constantly had lower IQs. Most alarmingly, the children of older men were found to be 3.5 times more likely to have autism, and 25 times more likely to have bipolar disorder or massive clinical depression (which are both linked to chemical imbalances in the brain).

Every one of the disorders mentioned above (exempting low IQ as a stand-alone trait) can be linked to developmental complications, indicating that the sexual cells of aging men might have a higher chance of forming detrimental mutations.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the average age of U.S. fathers is 32.5 years old, and is increasing yearly. The authors of the study indicate that in the U.S. especially, this is because men and women alike are choosing to postpone starting a family until after they accomplish career goals. It remains unclear if these statistics are tied to increased diagnoses of clinical depression, and up until last year, rising numbers in autism diagnoses.

Still, researchers urge men considering children to consider their age first if they wish to avoid burdening their child with developmental complications.

The Study was published in JAMA Psychiatry on February 26.