• Smoking and epigenetics in pregnancy
  • Amin Namdari,1,* Sina Dalvand,2
    1. Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Fasa University of Medical Sciences, Fasa, Fars, Iran
    2. International Campus, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.


  • Introduction: Cigarette smoke including several toxins and Carcinogens which have damaging consequence on whole stages of fertility, including ovulation, Ovarian-produced steroids, gametogenesis and implantation, in which finally result in infertility. These toxins can disrupt the natural epigenetic pattern that required for normal cell function. The evaluation of methylation pattern in several genes including HKR1, GPR135, GCA, GTF2H2, PURA, LINE-1, AluYb8, GFI1, AHRR, in location cg27402634 gene and RUNX3 in maternal smoking -placenta and cord blood has been investigated, As shown, these changes in methylation pattern in RUNX3 and cg27402634 are associated with asthma and weight loss, respectively. On the other hand, some studies have shown that maternal smoking reduced endometrial receptivity, which occur due to expression changes of key biomolecules involved in blastocyst implantation, including VEGF, VEGF-A, FGF2, CXCL12, PR and ER. Despite implantation is an important stage of the fertility cycle and any defect in it leads to infertility, but studies on the methylation pattern changes of genes involved in implantation and uterine receptivity are very limited and need further investigation.
  • Methods: The article search methods in this article correspond to the principles of systematic search.
  • Results: Maternal smoking result in low uterine receptivity and defect in blastocyst implantation and if implantation was performed, methylation pattern changes in the placenta may impair its function resulting in placental abruption, abortion and Preterm delivery.
  • Conclusion: However it is possible maternal smoking has a successful delivery, but it will increase the risk of fetal diseases such as weight loss(58), asthma(84), etc, Which may remain these diseases throughout offspring life after birth.
  • Keywords: Smoking; DNA methylation; implantation; infertility