In light of ongoing news coverage of various potential causes and risk factors, it is very tempting to disregard the "everything causes autism" genre.
A release from the UC Davis MIND Institute:
Mothers of children with autism are significantly less likely to report taking iron supplements before and during their pregnancies than the mothers of children who are developing normally, a study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute has found.From PsychCentral:
Low iron intake was associated with a five-fold greater risk of autism in the child if the mother was 35 or older at the time of the child's birth or if she suffered from metabolic conditions such as obesity hypertension or diabetes.
The research is the first to examine the relationship between maternal iron intake and having a child with autism spectrum disorder, the authors said. The study, "Maternal intake of supplemental iron and risk for autism spectrum disorders," is published online today in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
New research suggests the spacing of pregnancies may play a factor in the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Investigators discovered children who were conceived either less than one year or more than five years after the birth of their prior sibling were more likely to be diagnosed with autism than children conceived following an interval of two to five years.
The research is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
