Pregnant Smokers Could Alter Their Children’s Genes, Environmental Health Perspectives Study Reveals

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The largest study of its kind has shown that smoking during pregnancy could cause epigenetic changes in the fetus, resulting in birth defects and health problems later in life. Christina Markunas of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and her colleagues have found that newborn children of mothers who smoked while pregnant are more likely to have experienced certain changes to their DNA than newborn children of non-smokers. The research appears in Environmental Health Perspectives.

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