India, March 16 -- A father's nicotine exposure can affect his offspring's ability to process sugar and may contribute to diabetes risk, according to new research using lab mice at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"When male mice consumed nicotine in their drinking water, their offspring had metabolic alterations that appear to impact the way the body metabolizes sugar," said the study's senior author, Raquel Chamorro-Garcia, a professor of microbiology and environmental toxicology at UC Santa Cruz. "This suggests that tobacco use in men is linked with an increased risk of their descendants developing diabetes."

Tobacco use is a leading preventable cause of adverse health outcomes. The new study appears in the Journal of the En...