Background

An increasing number of reports suggest early life exposures result in adverse effects in offspring who were never directly exposed; this phenomenon is termed “transgenerational inheritance.” Given concern for public health implications for potential effects of exposures transmitted to subsequent generations, it is critical to determine how widespread and robust this phenomenon is and to identify the range of exposures and possible outcomes.

Objectives

This scoping report examines the evidence for transgenerational inheritance associated with exposure to a wide range of stressors in humans and animals to identify areas of consistency, uncertainty, data gaps, and to evaluate general risk of bias issues for the transgenerational study design.

Methods

A protocol was developed to collect and categorize the literature into a systematic evidence map for transgenerational inheritance by health effects, exposures, and evidence streams following the Office of Health Assessment and Translation (OHAT) approach for conducting literature-based health assessments.

Results

A PubMed search yielded 63,758 unique records from which 257 relevant studies were identified and categorized into a systematic evidence map by evidence streams (46 human and 211 animal), broad health effect categories, and exposures. Data extracted from the individual studies are available in the Health Assessment Workspace Collaborative (HAWC) program. There are relatively few bodies of evidence where multiple studies evaluated the same exposure and the same or similar outcomes. Studies evaluated for risk of bias generally had multiple issues in design or conduct.

Conclusions

The evidence mapping illustrated that risk of bias, few studies, and heterogeneity in exposures and endpoints examined present serious limitations to available bodies of evidence for assessing transgenerational effects. Targeted research is suggested to addressed inconsistencies and risk of bias issues identified, and thereby establish more robust bodies of evidence to critically assess transgenerational effects - particularly by adding data on exposure-outcome pairs where there is some evidence (i.e., reproductive, metabolic, and neurological effects).

中文翻译：

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人类和动物对健康影响的潜在跨代遗传证据：证据图和最新科学评估

背景

越来越多的报告表明，早期接触会对从未直接接触过的后代产生不利影响。这种现象被称为“跨代遗传”。考虑到公众健康对暴露给后代的潜在影响的影响，至关重要的是确定这种现象的广泛性和稳健性，并确定暴露的范围和可能的结果。

目标

这份范围界定报告审查了与暴露于人类和动物的多种应激源相关的跨代遗传证据，以确定一致性，不确定性，数据缺口的领域，并评估了跨代研究设计中普遍存在的偏见风险。

方法

根据卫生评估和翻译办公室（OHAT）进行基于文献的健康评估的方法，制定了协议以收集文献并将其归类为系统的证据图，以通过健康影响，暴露和证据流来进行跨代遗传。

结果

通过PubMed搜索获得了63,758条独特记录，从中识别了257条相关研究，并通过证据流（46个人和211动物），广泛的健康影响类别和暴露将其分类为系统的证据图。从各个研究中提取的数据可在“健康评估工作区协作”（HAWC）程序中获得。仅有少数证据表明，多项研究评估了相同的暴露以及相同或相似的结果。评估偏倚风险的研究通常在设计或行为上存在多个问题。

结论

证据图谱表明，存在偏见风险，很少进行研究以及暴露的风险和研究终点的异质性，严重限制了评估跨代影响的现有证据。建议进行有针对性的研究，以解决所发现的不一致性和偏见问题的风险，从而建立更强有力的证据体系，以批判性地评估跨代影响-尤其是在有证据（例如生殖，代谢和生殖健康）的情况下增加关于暴露-结果对的数据。神经系统的影响）。