Can a Father's Age - Young or Old - Affect His Daughter's Chance of Cancer?

Now here's something new for older fathers to worry about.  A father's age at birth may affect a daughter's risk of breast cancer later in life.

 First it's schizophrenia that may appear in children, with older fathers.  Then it was autism.  And now this.  I'm ashamed to say this but I'm glad sperm is starting to get the same treatment as old eggs.

 But wait a minute.  We're talking about really young fathers, with some kinds of cancers.

 While the team of researchers did not find an association for maternal age at birth for any type of cancer, they found that paternal age is linked to an increased adult-onset cancer risk for daughters – and the link was not only to advanced paternal age.

 Newswise.com reports that "parental age, especially paternal age, at conception appears to be associated with a wide range of effects on the health and development of the offspring.
Women born to a father under the age of 20 had a 35 percent greater risk of breast cancer and more than two times greater risk of ovarian cancer, when compared to those born to a father whose age at his daughter’s birth was 25 to 29 years old.
But women born to a father whose age at childbirth was 30 to 34 years had a 25 percent greater risk of endometrial cancer than those born to a father age 25 to 29.
“We observed that young paternal age, as well as advanced paternal age, increase the risk of breast cancer,” newswise quotes Yani Lu, Ph.D., who led a team of City of Hope researchers. “We also found that young paternal age increases the risk of ovarian cancer.”
So, young or old, we run the risk of harming our unborn children's health.  And since age isn't really something you can do anything about (I would have loved to have a child in my 30s but that's not how my life played out), maybe we just need to keep ourselves as healthy as we possibly can -- for everyone's sake.

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