Heart Surgery in Parents Leaves Lasting Legacy in Offspring

When a heart is injured early in life, the memory of that trauma doesn’t just remain with the individual—it can be passed down to the next generation, according to groundbreaking research published in the journal Circulation.

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) and the University of Bern have discovered that cardiac injury experienced by male mice in their youth triggers measurable changes in the heart development and function of their offspring, even though these offspring never experienced heart problems themselves.

“The offspring of injured fathers showed evidence of altered heart development, characterized by transient expansion of the left ventricle during the first weeks after birth,” explains study first author Benedetta Coppe of the University of Bern. “This surprised us, since the only difference between the newborns was that in one group the father had experienced cardiac injury early in life, while in the other group the father was uninjured.”

This discovery has significant implications for human health. Nearly 40,000 children in the United States and 30,000 in Europe require heart surgery each year. Understanding how these early-life cardiac procedures might affect not only the patients but potentially their future children could reshape how medical histories are collected and evaluated.

The study’s findings suggest that cardiac surgery in the first weeks after birth leaves a lasting “memory” that can eventually be transmitted to the next generation—creating what amounts to an inherited adaptation to cardiac stress.

In a surprising twist, when researchers experimentally induced heart injuries in the offspring of previously injured fathers, they discovered these mice actually showed improved cardiac remodeling compared to offspring of uninjured fathers. This enhanced remodeling was associated with increased blood volume ejected by the heart per minute, suggesting better adaptation to cardiac stress.

Nadia Mercader, who led the research team, noted another curious finding: “After injury, the heart normally switches its energy source from lipids to glucose, and this results in an accumulation of lipids in the heart tissue.” However, the team observed that “the offspring of injured fathers accumulated fewer lipids in response to induced heart injury and had higher concentrations of circulating lipids in the blood. These observations suggest that the metabolism of mice with this ‘family history’ recovers better when these mice are themselves subjected to cardiac injury.”

The researchers believe these findings open new avenues for understanding how early-life cardiac events might influence future generations. The study also underscores that family surgical history—not just genetic history—may be an important component of comprehensive medical records.

While human studies would be needed to confirm whether similar inheritance patterns exist in people, the work highlights how physical trauma in one generation may prepare offspring to better withstand similar challenges, creating a kind of biological memory that spans generations.

For the millions of adults who underwent cardiac procedures as children, this research offers a new dimension to consider regarding their family’s health—suggesting that the heart indeed remembers, and that memory may be more enduring than previously thought.