Autism Causes Linked to Older-Women Births, Firstborns and Breech Births
Posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
New research shows that autism causes may be linked to women who give birth over the age of 35, firstborn children and breech births.
This group is at a significantly higher risk for giving birth to children who develop autism spectrum disorder, states the University of Utah School of Medicine. For example, women who give birth at the age of 35 and older are 1.7 times more likely to have a child with autism spectrum disorder, than women between the ages of 20 to 34. Autism was also more likely to occur in first-born children. Also, children who had autism were twice as likely to be a breech birth, not born head first.
“The results of this study give us an opportunity to look more closely at these risk factors for children across the autism spectrum, and not only those diagnosed with autism,” said first author Deborah A. Bilder, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry. “This shows that further investigation of the influence of prenatal factors is warranted.”
Utah has one of the highest autism spectrum disorder rates in the United States, one in 133 children. The researches state that more investigation between these risk factors would have to be done.
Autism is a brain disorder that impairs social, communicative and behavioral development.
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