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We already know that cannabis lowers sperm count, but new research suggests that the drug actually causes changes to the sperm itself - which might have implications for the health of a potential baby.
我们都知道大麻会降低精子数量，但新研究表明，大麻实际上或导致精子本身发生变化--可能对即将出生的宝宝的健康产生影响。
For a study published today in the journal Epigenetics, scientists at Duke University compared the sperm of two groups of rats: those who had been given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, and those who had not. Then they compared the sperm of 24 human men who smoked marijuana weekly versus a control group who used marijuana no more than 10 times in their life and not at all in the past half-year. In both cases - rats and humans - marijuana changed how genes work in sperm cells.
《表观遗传学》期刊今日发表了一篇研究：杜克大学的科学家将两组大鼠的精子进行了对比：一组大鼠被注射了四氢大麻醇（THC，大麻中的精神活性成分），另一组没有。之后，他们比对了每周吸食大麻的24位男性的精子与一生中使用大麻不超过10次的男性对照组（过去半年从未吸过）的精子。在这两种情况下--大鼠和人类--大麻都改变了基因在精子细胞中的作用。
Think of your DNA as a list of instructions for making proteins, and genes as small subsets of that list. Our body has little chemical tags (called methyl groups) that get added to the DNA at specific regions, explains Susan Kay Murphy, a professor of gynecology at Duke and co-author of the study. These chemicals don't mutate the genes themselves, but they do affect how they're used, like deciding which instructions are followed and which aren't.
将DNA视为产生蛋白质的指令列表，并将基因看作列表中的子集。我们的身体几乎没有可以在特定区域添加到DNA中的化学标签（称为甲基），杜克大学的妇科学教授以及本研究的共同作者苏珊·凯·墨菲解释道。这些化学物本身不会改变基因，但它们会影响基本的使用方式，例如：哪些指令该遵循，哪些不该遵循。
In both rats and humans, the cannabis affected many different genes involved in two different pathways. (Think of pathways as another set of instructions, this time for regulating various bodily functions.) One is important for organs to reach full size, and one plays a role in cancer and suppressing tumors. "That just blows my mind," says Murphy. "How do you even reconcile that, biologically, an entire pathway is going to be affected by these changes?"
在大鼠和人类的实验中，大麻影响了涉及两种不同途径的许多不同基因。（将途径视作另一组指令，用于调节身体各种功能的指令。）一个对于器官达到完整尺寸十分重要，另一个在癌症和抑制肿瘤中发挥作用。"这一发现令我大吃一惊，"墨菲说道。"从生物学角度来看，我们又该如何协调这一变化，整个途径将会受到这些变化的影响吗？"
This doesn't mean that smoking cannabis will lead future children to be more vulnerable to cancer. Murphy is very clear that this is a pilot study originally intended to see if cannabis even has any effect of this kind on sperm. The sample size is small, and they didn't control for the concentration of THC the human recruits smoked. The scientists did, however, measure THC in the urine and noted that more THC in the urine correlated with more changes.
这并不是说，吸食大麻会导致将要出生的宝宝更易患癌症。墨菲表达的非常清楚：这是一项试点研究，旨在研究大麻是否会对精子产生影响。而且研究的取样很少，他们并没有控制受试者吸食大麻的四氢大麻醇浓度。然而，科学家的确测量了尿液中的四氢大麻醇含量，并指出尿液中四氢大麻醇越多与更大的变化相关。
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