Programando uma vida reprodutiva saudável: ensino médio e o conceito das responsabilidades parentais antes da concepção.

Abstract

The study of development is, nowadays, essential to understand any area of biology. It is believed that the environment and the conditions to which living things are exposed create changes in the development of an organism. The Theory of the Origins of Health and Disease Development (DOHaD) provides information in order to propose research methodologies to clarify the developmental influence of adverse events on the health-disease pattern throughout life, which can be explained by epigenetic processes. The epigenome is particularly susceptible to deregulation by environmental factors and living conditions, from conception to adulthood. Thus, the present dissertation aimed to disseminate and "translate" relevant scientific findings on the subject in a language accessible to the students of the 3rd year of High School, so that they become aware of their own health and their responsibilities before conception. An extensive review of the literature was made to identify the main mechanisms capable of programming and presenting changes in the development of health and disease. In this way, we randomly divided the students from the 3rd year of High School into two groups called the Playful and Expositive/Interactive Group. For the Playful group: 1) we elaborated and we ministered an expositive class of 1 hour of duration, that exposes general concepts of epigenetic regulation and of how environmental factors impact the methylation and acetylation of the DNA, thus regulating the gene transcription and the heredity of these markings; 2) we develop and expose students to an informative booklet describing the main consequences and / or sequelae that smoking, alcohol consumption, malnutrition (malnutrition and obesity), infectious conditions and parental age have on reproductive health and the development of concept; 3) we invite the students to participate in a dynamic with a game (MethylACTION) designed with the purpose of optimizing the learning of the theme by the target audience. The Expositive/Interactive group was exposed to an expositive class of 2 hours of duration, covering the contents described in 1 and 2. Before the application of the didactic sequences described previously, the students were asked to answer a diagnostic questionnaire and at the end of the activities, both groups were submitted to a questionnaire that evaluated the level of learning and which methodology was most effective in sedimenting the new knowledge proposed. It was noticed that after the statistical analyzes performed with the MacNemar Test followed by x², it did not show significant differences between the two applied methodologies. When using the two-way ANOVA followed by the t (parametric) test, it was demonstrated that there was a greater knowledge construction by the playful group that obtained a greater number of correct questions after the application of the methodology. Therefore, we conclude that teaching about parental responsibilities before conception, by different methodology, can be applied to public high school students and that concepts such as epigenetics and gene regulation influenced by the environment can be widely diffused to these students.