Cocaine-Using Fathers: Not Great Role Models, But May Help Son from Becoming Addicted, Study Says

A father that uses cocaine is not necessarily the "father of the year" but a new study found that it does make his son more resistant to addiction in the future which can be a positive thing.

The study, presented in San Diego on Monday at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting, was conducted on rats and the researchers found that the offspring of rats given cocaine were less likely to become addicted to the drug later on. The male offspring were allowed to self-administer cocaine for two months, and those who had fathers who were given cocaine, chose not to take a dose of the addictive drug.

The researchers from Penn's Perelman School of Medicine found that the same was not true for the female offspring as they chose to take some of the self-administered cocaine that was on offer. The study suggests cocaine causes DNA alterations in sperm in which the changes are transmitted to males in the next generation.

"This adds to the growing body of evidence that cocaine abuse in a father rat can affect how his sons may respond to the drug -- and point to potential mechanisms that contribute to this phenomenon," lead researcher Mathieu Wimmer said in a statement. 

The authors focused on the physiology of neurons before and after taking cocaine in the offspring of cocaine-experienced fathers, and found that they were less sensitive to the drug and less likely to give in to addictive behaviors.

"DNA may shape who we are, but we also shape our own DNA," said Schahram Akbarian of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York in introducing the studies presented to neuroscientists gathered in San Diego, according to the LA Times. "These findings show how experience or drug exposure change the way that genes are expressed, and could be incredibly important in developing treatments for addiction and for understanding processed like memory."

The Penn researchers presented their findings at the Society for Neuroscience's annual conference, being held this week in San Diego.