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Aarhus (pte023/28.02.2003/13:50) - Researchers at the University of Aarhus http://www.au.dk have discovered that a father's genes may influence the timing of his child's birth, increasing the likelihood of an lengthy pregnancy by up to 30 per cent.
The Danish team under Annette Wind-Olesen was the first to study the role of a father's genes in pregnancies that lasted longer than 42 weeks.
Originally scientists believed that environmental factors caused a prolonged pregnancy, but the team's study brought surprising results. It turned out that the risk of a second overdue pregnancy was significantly lower when the woman's second child was fathered by a different man. "This shows that paternal genes have an influence on the timing of the birth," said Wind-Olesen. The team's next task is to find the responsible genes and assess the evolutionary implications of this connection.
The study looked at 22,000 women who had had an overdue first pregnancy between 1980 and 1994. The control group consisted of 7,000 mothers with two or more children.
Published in the New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com , the study reports that the overall risk of a second overdue pregnancy was 19.9 per cent. When the mother changed partners after the first pregnancy, the risk was reduced to15.4 per cent. In the case of a 'normal' first pregnancy, the risk was only 7.7 per cent.
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