Beyond question: a collaboration between EPoCH and artist Olga Trevisan

Back in May, IEU researcher Dr Gemma Sharp took part in Creative Reactions, an initiative that pairs scientists with artists to create artwork based on their academic research. With 50 artists and 50 scientists collaborating on works from sculptures and wood carvings to canvas, digital and performance art, the 2019 exhibition ran across two venues in Bristol.

Gemma was paired with Olga Trevisan, an artist based in Venice, Italy. They had conversations over Skype where they spoke about their work and formed some initial ideas about how they could combine their interests in a new way while remaining coherent to their own practices. Reflecting on the collaboration, Olga said, “I love how curious you can be of a subject you haven’t considered before. I believe collaboration helps to open your own mind.”

Based on some of the work around EPoCH, Olga created a piece called Beyond Question, which comments on the complexities of scientific data collection, bias and interpretation.

It poses questions around the pervasive assumption that pregnant women are more responsible for the (ill) health of their unborn children than their male partners are. Gemma and colleagues have argued that such assumptions drive the research agenda and the public perception of parental roles, by shaping which research questions get asked, which data are collected, and the quality of the scientific ‘answer’.

Photo credit: Olga Trevisan

Beyond Question was presented in two phases at two separate exhibitions: during the first phase, people were invited to answer questions with a simple Yes or No using a stylus; leaving no marks but only invisible, anonymous traces on the surface below. Answers will reflect the real assumptions, beliefs and attitudes of the respondent, but perhaps also, despite anonymity, their eagerness to ‘please’ the questioners, to give the ‘right’ answer, and to mask their true responses to paint themselves in the ‘best’ light.

In the second phase, the questions were removed and the answer traces were left alone to carry their own meaning; free to be combined with the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions of the viewer and to be interpreted and judged in perhaps an entirely different way.

Photo credit: Olga Trevisan

The questions posed were:

  • “Do you think a mother’s lifestyle around the time of pregnancy could be bad for her baby’s health?”
  • “Do you think a father’s lifestyle around the time of pregnancy could be bad for his baby’s health?”
  • “Before her baby is born, a pregnant mother shouldn’t be allowed to do unhealthy things, like smoke or drink alcohol. Do you agree or disagree?”
  • “Before his baby is born, a father shouldn’t be allowed to do unhealthy things, like smoke or drink alcohol. Do you agree or disagree?”

Find out more

Further info about Creative Reactions Bristol is available on their facebook page, or contact Matthew Lee on matthew.lee@bristol.ac.uk 

This blog post was originally posted on the EPOCH blog.

How might fathers influence the health of their offspring?

Dr Gemma Sharp, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Epidemiology

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A novel thing about the Exploring Prenatal influences On Childhood Health (EPoCH) study is that we’re not just focusing on maternal influences on offspring health, we’re looking at paternal influences as well.

One of the reasons that most other studies have focused on maternal factors is that it’s perhaps easier to see how mothers might have an effect on their child’s health. After all, the fetus develops inside the mother’s body for nine months and often continues to be supported by her breastmilk throughout infancy. However, in a new paper from me and Debbie Lawlor published in the journal Diabetologia, we explain that there are lots of ways that fathers might affect their child’s health as well, and appreciating this could have really important implications. The paper focuses on obesity and type two diabetes, but the points we make are relevant to other health traits and diseases as well.

The EPOCH study will look at how much paternal factors actually causally affect children’s health. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

How could fathers influence the health of their children?

These are the main mechanisms we discuss in the paper:

  • Through paternal DNA. A father contributes around half of their child’s DNA, so it’s easy to see how a father’s genetic risk of disease can be transmitted across generations. Furthermore, a father’s environment and behaviour (e.g. smoking) could damage sperm and cause genetic mutations in sperm DNA, which could be passed on to his child.
  • Through “epigenetic” effects in sperm. The term “epigenetics” refers to molecular changes that affect how the body interprets DNA, without any changes occurring to the DNA sequence itself. Some evidence suggests that a father’s environment and lifestyle can cause epigenetic changes in his sperm, that could then be passed on to his child. These epigenetic changes might influence the child’s health and risk of disease.
  • Through a paternal influence on the child after birth. There are lots of ways a father can influence their child’s environment, which can in turn affect the child’s health. This includes things like how often the father looks after the child, his parenting style, his activity levels, what he feeds the child, etc.
  • Through a father’s influence on the child’s mother. During pregnancy, a father can influence a mother’s environment and physiology through things like causing her stress or giving her emotional support. This might have an effect on the fetus developing in her womb. After the birth of the child, a father might influence the type and level of child care a mother is able to provide, which could have a knock-on effect on child health.
There are lots of ways in which fathers might influence the health of their offspring. This figure was originally published in our paper in Diabetologia (rdcu.be/bPCBa).

What does this mean for public health, clinical practice and society?

Appreciating the role of fathers means that fathers could be given advice and support to help improve offspring health, and their own. Currently hardly any advice is offered to fathers-to-be, so this would be an important step forward. Understanding the role of fathers would also help challenge assumptions that mothers are the most important causal factor shaping their children’s health. This could help lessen the blame sometimes placed on mothers for the ill health of the next generation.

What’s the current evidence like?

In the paper, we reviewed all the current literature we could find on paternal effects on offspring risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. We found that, although there have been about 116 studies, this is far less than the number of studies looking at maternal effects. Also, a lot of these studies just show correlations between paternal factors and offspring health (and correlation does not equal causation!).

What is needed now is a concerted effort to find out how much paternal factors actually causally affect offspring health. This is exactly what EPoCH is trying to do, so watch this space!

This content was reposted with permission from the EPOCH blog.