Oral Presentation Annual Meetings of the Endocrine Society of Australia and Society for Reproductive Biology and Australia and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society 2016

Influence of smoking on fertility (#181)

Eileen McLaughlin 1
  1. University of Newcastle, CALLAGHAN, NSW, Australia

Following the proposition in 1989 that many long term chronic adult diseases originated in the fetus, many studies have concluded that a wide range of diseases from obesity to asthma have been found to have been instigated in early development. As both mammalian oocyte and male germ cell development begins in fetal life, it has been suggested that environmental and lifestyle factors of the mother could directly impact the fertility of subsequent generations. Cigarette smoke is a known toxicant, yet disturbingly a significant proportion of women continue to smoke throughout pregnancy. The focus of our investigations has been to characterize, using an animal model, the adverse effects of smoking directly on ovary and oocyte quality in female offspring and testes and sperm development of male mice exposed in utero and on subsequent generations. In summary, our results demonstrate that pregnancy and lactational exposure to cigarette smoke can have long-lasting profound and subtle effects on the fertility of the next generation(s) of female and male offspring.