
How much a baby is touched leaves measurable effects on DNA methylation (2017) - wyndham
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article186889938.html
======
samstave
Hmm...

I have three children - and all are intelligent, beautiful well adjusted kids.
5, 7, and 15.

One thing I made a point of as each was born - I maintained as much physica
contact with each immediately after birth. I didnt allow them to leave or be
examined without me there, touching them.

I did it not for the posted reasons, but just beacuse it felt right to me.

ALso - I would hum and sing to them a tune while they were still in the womb.

As soon as they came out, I held them and sang and hummed the same tune to
them. It immediately calmed them - with my first, she immediately relaxed and
stopped crying whil the nurse took her vitals, measurements and pricked her
heel.

It was magical.

~~~
nashashmi
Not sure how much it is related, but I learned how touch has a powerfully
lasting impact when I read about babies from an underfunded Hungarian
orphanage having lots of health problems later in life because of how little
they were touched.

~~~
yibg
Seems very probable that an underfunded orphanage will have other areas like
healthcare, sanitation and nutrition lacking as well. Was there something
specific about what you read that related to touch?

~~~
nashashmi
[https://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-
kids-...](https://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-
brains.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/02/science/the-experience-
of...](https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/02/science/the-experience-of-touch-
research-points-to-a-critical-role.html)

This was something I quickly found. I can't seem to find the very article I
read however.

~~~
yibg
Years of neglect is quite a bit broader than just touch. I would expect years
of neglect in early childhood to have a long lasting effect on the mental
development of kids.

------
VeninVidiaVicii
The epigenome isn't some mystical thing, it's just a manifestation of the
environment on cellular function. These kinds of sensationalist articles are
exquisitely frustrating as a genomicist.

~~~
badestrand
You need to give that knowledge time to spread. The vast majority of living
adults learned in school that the DNA is fixed and the surrounding stuff is
just junk. Eventually everyone will know about epigenetics but how else would
you spread the information if not with articles like these.

~~~
VeninVidiaVicii
A few months ago, I spoke to my uncle, who's an endocrinologist at a medical
school, and when I told him "Your organs are different because of epigenetics"
a lightbulb went off in his head. I think outreach is just doing am awful job
of explaining epigenetics. Even his colleagues in genetics hadn't really been
able to explain it very succinctly.

Instead, articles are full of explanations like this one, leading you to make
outlandish conclusions. Hell, even in one of my community outreach events, a
farmer came up to me afterwards and said he doesn't want to grow any crops
with methylated DNA.

------
gatestone
It's very hard for a non-expert in the field to estimate the correlation vs.
causality fallacies in a study like this.

~~~
jMyles
This is an example of the sort of cases in which I worry that experts become
clouded by zealotry; I think it's more likely that a generalist-at-a-distance
will poke the right holes in the methodology of these kinds of studies.

~~~
username90
I wonder why they don't have independent statisticians review each paper doing
statistics? Seems weird and abusable that only people from the same subfield
reviews the papers.

~~~
m_rcin
It's hard enough to find reviewers in the same field. I imagine finding
statisticians to review papers from fields they don't care about would be
problematic. You probably know that reviewers work for free.

------
throwaway010718
IIRC DNA methylation (sp?) is used in blood tests to determine the rate at
which you are aging biologically. This article does claim that the children
who are touched less _develop_ at a slower in addition to having a lower DNA
methylation. So in a sense, the less a child is touched, the slower the child
ages biologically according to this marker and observation.

Anecdotally, there are environmental situations where animals can
significantly increase life-expectancy but at the expense of delayed sexual
maturity.

It would be interesting, but of course not conclusive, to see if these
children experience puberty later and if they also live longer. Perhaps some
neglect has some benefit.

~~~
blowski
That would make a good sci-fi - an army of sociopaths that live until they’re
200 years old.

~~~
bane
Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan is basically this.

------
rawland
Actual study this article is referencing:

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-
psyc...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-
psychopathology/article/epigenetic-correlates-of-neonatal-contact-in-
humans/9BD9799A7C6E0859B93E092EA0727A4B)

Abstract:

Animal models of early postnatal mother–infant interactions have highlighted
the importance of tactile contact for biobehavioral outcomes via the
modification of DNA methylation (DNAm). The role of normative variation in
contact in early human development has yet to be explored. In an effort to
translate the animal work on tactile contact to humans, we applied a
naturalistic daily diary strategy to assess the link between maternal contact
with infants and epigenetic signatures in children 4–5 years later, with
respect to multiple levels of child-level factors, including genetic variation
and infant distress. We first investigated DNAm at four candidate genes: the
glucocorticoid receptor gene, nuclear receptor subfamily 3, group C, member 1
(NR3C1), μ-opioid receptor M1 (OPRM1) and oxytocin receptor (OXTR; related to
the neurobiology of social bonds), and brain-derived neurotrophic factor
(BDNF; involved in postnatal plasticity). Although no candidate gene DNAm
sites significantly associated with early postnatal contact, when we next
examined DNAm across the genome, differentially methylated regions were
identified between high and low contact groups. Using a different application
of epigenomic information, we also quantified epigenetic age, and report that
for infants who received low contact from caregivers, greater infant distress
was associated with younger epigenetic age. These results suggested that early
postnatal contact has lasting associations with child biology.

------
08-15
Even if this result is real (I smell bad statistics), it's completely useless.

All cells in our bodies have the same genome. But a hepatozyte and a neuron
are very different cells, aren't they? The difference is that cells
specialize, and they do so by selectively methylating their genome (not the
only mechanism, but an important one), thereby modifying the expression of
genes. So a liver has a very different epigenome than the brain of the same
person. Now here we're looking at a study of the saliva epigenome, apparently
the most important tissue they could come up with.

Then they don't analyze the epigenome in any interesting way. Generally, the
more a cell specializes, the fewer genes are active. Expressing this as "more
mature" is rather dumb. "More geriatric" would be equally appropriate. Does it
not matter at all, _which_ genes are methylated?

So, let's summarize the study properly:

"If you don't touch your child enough, his saliva with age more slowly."

~~~
dwaltrip
Can you back up your implication that the saliva epigenome has no other
meaningful and impactful correlates?

~~~
08-15
Why do you expect me to prove a negative? These "scientists" (really just
tinkerers) need to argue for their implicit claim first.

But they don't. They take the (correct, but hardly useful) statement
"methylation generally increases with age" and instead say "with maturity" to
make it sound impactful.

------
8bitsrule
Not too surprising that earliest experiences in life are going to color an
individual's expectations of the world, and how to respond to it.

"consequences on the epigenome" as the article so charmingly puts it.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
> "consequences on the epigenome"

Indeed such a stupid phrase. Any dynamic activity in the body, every process
or change which happens due to dynamic actions during life is technically a
consequence on the epigenome, because it requires some cells/organs to change
some chemical reactions, produce more of this stuff and less of that stuff -
it requires activating some genes and deactivating other genes. You drink tea
- it has consequences on the epigenome. You think happy thoughts instead of
sad ones - it has consequences on the epigenome... You excercise - it has
consequences on the epigenome...

~~~
Accujack
Your talking about the epigenome has consequences on the epigenome.

------
glofish
I think there is a high chance that is 100% bullshit.

Most likely has to do with confusing cause-and-effect.

It could be just as well that highly methylated babies cry more and could be
more demanding or parents with highly methylated babies are themselves less
tolerant to crying thus end up handling babies more.

The problem, they way it is being reported, and they way it lines up with
pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo groupthink makes it stink. That's why it is
newsworthy. People _want to believe_ that handling a baby will change their
DNA.

Same bullshit like papers like this:

\- Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/science/25dna.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/science/25dna.html)

~~~
mindfulhack
I'm not a professional scientist, but shouldn't the spirit of science be
curiosity and exploration at all times, not shooting down a new idea as soon
as you hear it?

If such an attitude were present in every person, science would not progress
at all.

I'm not that long a veteran here, but I think at HN we are more interested in
having our minds and ears open and feeling we can comfortably share and
discuss articles that make us think, than fostering an attitude like this.

I mean this with respect, whoever you are.

~~~
carbocation
I think that science works best if we marry two mindsets: the joy of seeing
something novel, and the suspicion of seeing something too good to be true.
They don’t have to be present in equal measure for every article, and while I
wouldn’t word it the same way as the parent, I appreciate the healthy
skepticism on this topic.

~~~
earthboundkid
Yes: a good reasoner is charitable _and_ critical. You need both.

------
anonytrary
N = 100, and all of the physical contact data seems to have been reported
through journaling by the parents. I wonder if that data is actually reliable.

------
BurningFrog
Wait... Does our DNA change as we age??

If so, to only sample the DNA _after_ the study and not before seems crazy.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
The article is talking about methylation, which I always interpret to mean
they're referring to the epigenome. It doesn't change our DNA, so much as the
expression of it.

~~~
amelius
How much state is in the expression of DNA? Will all this type of state be
lost eventually, or is there also persistent state in the expression of DNA?

~~~
Xixi
The field of study is called Epigenetics [1]. I know practically nothing about
it, but it seems that some of these alterations to the expression of DNA are
not only persistent, but can also be inherited. Which is why some of these
discoveries have been called a revenge of Lamarck over Darwin...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics)

------
dmos62
So, just how mutable is the DNA? For the sake of the discussion, I don't know
anything about DNA that I can say I didn't get from a sci-fi flick.

~~~
hornetblack
There's a special thing called "Epigenetics". The genes coded in DNA don't
change. But how they're used can change.

There's methyl groups that attach to the DNA. These stop parts of the DNA
being read.

There's Histones which wind up your DNA and control how much can be read.

These are used control which parts of DNA are used by which cells. Evey cell
has the same Genome, but each cell needs a different program to function, so
changing the _Gene Expression_ you get a different kind of cell.

------
mlinksva
I initially misread as "How much a baby is touched _by_ leaves [leaves]
measurable effects on DNA."

Leaving me with an idle question: has the effect of interaction with plants on
child development been studied?

~~~
yc20017
Ditto :D

------
gewa
This interview sounds like unpublished bullshit, it would never stand
reviewing. To claim this from the survey they conducted is just wrong. Every
science student learns about the difference between causation and correlation.

