Euthanasia and Autism

 In The Politics of Autism, I write about the dangers of eugenics and euthanasia. 

\An earlier post described euthanasia in the Netherlands. Some autistic people there have undergone euthanasia because they said they could not lead normal lives.  At NRO, Wesley Smith discusses an AP story on the study:

I never understand why people are surprised by these kinds of horror stories. Once a society decides that killing is an acceptable answer to suffering, what constitutes suffering sufficient to be made dead becomes highly elastic and stretches over time. This can even include loneliness, as I have written about before. The story describes the phenomenon:

Many of the patients cited different combinations of mental problems, physical ailments, diseases or aging-related difficulties as reasons for seeking euthanasia. Thirty included being lonely as one the causes of their unbearable pain. Eight said the only causes of their suffering were factors linked to their intellectual disability or autism — social isolation, a lack of coping strategies or an inability to adjust their thinking.

The unintended cruelty of euthanasia is becoming increasingly clear:

Dr. Bram Sizoo, a Dutch psychiatrist, was disturbed that young people with autism viewed euthanasia as a viable solution.

“Some of them are almost excited at the prospect of death,” Sizoo said. “They think this will be the end of their problems and the end of their family’s problems.” . . .

Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, wonders if the same thing is happening in Canada, which arguably has the world’s most permissive euthanasia laws and which doesn’t keep the kinds of records that the Netherlands does.

“Helping people with autism and intellectual disabilities to die is essentially eugenics,” Stainton said.

Indeed. Now, add in the prospect of organ harvesting as a benefit to society and the acute danger to the vulnerable who can come — or be made — to think that their deaths will have greater value than their lives comes vividly into focus.

Diabetes and Autism

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families. Health problems are prominent among them.

Daniel Gilmore and colleagues have an article at Autism titled "Diabetes mellitus in privately insured autistic adults in the United States"

Lay abstract:

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that is challenging to manage. Estimates of how common diabetes is among non-autistic adults are available, but improved estimates for autistic adults are needed. The purpose of this study was to obtain improved diabetes estimates for autistic adults. We analyzed a large private health insurance claims database to estimate how common diabetes was among autistic adults, and how likely autistic adults were to have diabetes compared to non-autistic adults at 5-year age intervals throughout adulthood (e.g. 18–22, 23–27). We found that diabetes was more common among autistic adults than non-autistic adults and that autistic adults were significantly more likely than non-autistic adults to have diabetes throughout most of adulthood. Our findings suggest that autistic adults may be more likely than non-autistic adults to experience diabetes in adulthood. The development of diabetes support services and programs that accommodate autistic adults’ individual needs are important for future study to promote positive diabetes outcomes for autistic adults.

How RFK Jr. Hurts People

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong. A leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.

He is now running for president as an independent.

Michelle R. Smith and Ali Swenson at AP spoke to mothers who had once believed RFK Jr.'s antivax nonsense.

“I thought he was heroic, because he was saying the things publicly that other people were too afraid to say,” said Lydia Greene.

Greene, who lives in the Canadian province of Alberta, declined all vaccines for her son after buying into the claims by Kennedy and other anti-vaccine “gurus” that vaccines cause autism. When her son started to show signs of autism, Greene discounted it out of hand.

“I couldn’t even see his autism because in the anti-vax movement, autism is the worst outcome that can happen to a child. And when they talk about their vaccinated autistic kids, it’s often with a tone of resentment and how they talk about how their life is ruined, their marriage is ruined, and it’s just this kid is damaged,” Greene said. “And so when my son was different, I couldn’t see that stuff about him.”

She said she did not recognize his condition until she “came out of the rabbit hole of anti-vax.”

“I realized I had wasted so much valuable time where he should have been in occupational therapy, speech therapy, evidence-based therapy for autism,” Greene said.

Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense produces articles, newsletters, books, podcasts, even TV shows on its own CHD.TV. Greene said those articles often validate anxious parents’ fears – no matter how irrational – while making them feel like someone powerful is listening.

Today, Greene believes the group exploited her.

“That’s what CHD does,” Greene said. “They find parents when they’re vulnerable. And hack into that.”

Research on Reducing Stigma

In The Politics of Autism, I write about the everyday struggles facing autistic people and their families -- including prejudice.

 So Yoon Kim and colleagues have an article at Autism titled "Time to level up: A systematic review of interventions aiming to reduce stigma toward autistic people."

Lay abstract

How non-autistic people think about autistic people impacts autistic people negatively. Many studies developed trainings to reduce autism stigma. The existing trainings vary a lot in terms of study design, content, and reported effectiveness. This means that a review studying how the studies have been conducted is needed. We also looked at the quality of these studies. We collected and studied 26 studies that tried to reduce stigma toward autistic people. The studies often targeted White K-12 students and college students. Most trainings were implemented once. Trainings frequently used video or computer. Especially, recent studies tended to use online platforms. The study quality was poor for most studies. Some studies made inaccurate claims about the intervention effectiveness. Studies did not sufficiently address study limitations. Future trainings should aim to figure out why and how interventions work. How intervention changes people’s behavior and thoughts should be studied. Researchers should study whether the training can change the societal stigma. Also, researchers should use a better study design.

Conclusion:

Most interventions have focused on elementary/middle school students or undergraduate students and have been conducted in Western countries with primarily White participants. Researchers have frequently utilized computers or videos to implement interventions, and recent interventions tended to utilize online platforms. Interventions frequently included explanatory and descriptive information about autism and assessed stigma with self-reports. However, researchers often neglected to utilize robust interventions such as examining baseline and controlling for baseline characteristics and using and clearly describing randomization and blinding procedures. Finally, more than half of NRSIs made unwarranted, causal claims about the intervention’s effectiveness, and most interventions did not contextualize their findings, given the heightened risk of bias inherent in their studies. Based on our findings, we suggest the need for more interventions as follows:

1.Utilize robust designs considering all risk of bias domains;
2.Assess non-autistic participants’ attitudinal and behavioral short-term and long-term changes, using masked and reliable outcome variables;
3.Target clinicians and other professionals whose attitudes and beliefs about autistic people may become deeply engrained and can directly impact access to care;
4.Assess autistic people’s perceptions of the impact of interventions on stigma;
5.Conduct interventions targeting more diverse participant samples in various cultures, especially those who have not frequently been included in the anti-stigma intervention research so far such as older populations and racial/ethnic minorities;
6.Sufficiently contextualize findings given flaws in study designs;
7.Conduct moderator and mediator analyses to identify active ingredients of interventions for specific participant samples;
8.Reach the general public, community members, and stakeholders by developing targeted interventions that seek to spark societal changes in stigma.

Home and Community-Based Services Relief Act

 The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of insurance and Medicaid services.

A release from Senator Bob Casey (D-PA):

Today, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, led a group of 17 of his Democratic colleagues in introducing the Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Relief Act, legislation to provide much-needed support to state programs that fund home and community-based long-term care services. Currently, staffing shortages at direct care providers have led to a reduction in HCBS availability, despite growing demand. The HCBS Relief Act would provide dedicated Medicaid funds to states for two years to stabilize their HCBS service delivery networks, recruit and retain HCBS direct care workers, and meet the long-term service and support needs of people eligible for Medicaid home and community-based services.

“A vast majority of seniors and people with disabilities would prefer to receive care at home or in their communities,” said Chairman Casey. “Unfortunately, because of our Nation’s caregiving crisis, home and community-based care has become increasingly difficult to access. By stabilizing and investing in the caregiving workforce, we can better provide seniors and people with disabilities with a real and significant choice to receive care in the setting of their choosing.”

More than 90% of those eligible for Medicaid long-term services and supports wish to receive those services in their homes. However, HCBS providers are struggling to meet the demand for their services due to extreme difficulty retaining staff and filling new vacancies. Under the HCBS Relief Act, States would receive a 10-point increase in the federal match (FMAP) for Medicaid for two fiscal years to enhance HCBS. Funds could be used to increase direct care worker pay, provide benefits such as paid family leave or sick leave, and pay for transportation expenses to and from the homes of those being served. The additional funds also can be used to support family caregivers, pay for recruitment and training of additional direct care workers, and pay for technology to facilitate services.

Chairman Casey has a long record of advocating for increased federal support for state-funded home and community-based long-term care services. In January 2023, Chairman Casey introduced the Better Care Better Jobs Act, with 41 co-sponsors, to enhance Medicaid funding for home care services for older adults, people with disabilities, and injured workers to help many of the over 650,000 people on waiting lists nationally finally receive care in the setting of their choice; increase payment rates to promote recruitment and retention of direct care workers, increase wages, and develop and update training opportunities; and provide support to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to conduct oversight and encourage innovation to benefit direct care workers and care recipients.

In March, Chairman Casey held a hearing to examine the economic benefit of investing in Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) as millions of older adults and people with disabilities nationwide rely on caregivers to provide everyday services like help with bathing, eating, and managing medications despite caregivers earning a median wage of roughly $14 per hour and often living in poverty. During the hearing, Casey introduced the HCBS Access Act to address lengthy waiting lists, that sometimes last years and even decades, for home care services as the majority of older adults and people with disabilities contend with being forced to live in an institutional setting to access the services they need due to long wait lists, despite a preference for receiving care at home.

Read more about the Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Relief Act here.

Speaker Johnson and Disabilities

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the congressional role in the issue.

In 2018, he voted for HR 620, to weaken the Americans with Disabilities Act

Libby Stanford at Education Week:

He’s also signed onto a proposal that would create a federal tax credit to facilitate private school choice and another that would allow states to receive their federal education funds in the form of a block grant, freeing them from many of the requirements that accompany funds they receive under Title I—the federal program that supports low-income schools—and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

DeSantis Says He'd Take Antivax Votes from RFK

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong. A leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.

He is now running as an independent and could tip the swing state of Georgia away from the Republicans.

A.G. Gancarski at Florida Politics:

In New Hampshire, Gov. Ron DeSantis is again arguing that he is a better bet to counter Robert Kennedy in a General Election than Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

“RFK Jr. will be a vessel for anti-lockdown and anti-Anthony Fauci voters if Trump is the nominee. If I’m the nominee, they all go to me because I stood up against Fauci,” DeSantis said, in footage recorded in Londonderry by reporter Stephanie Murray.

DeSantis added that he would “clean out” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It’s a big part of my platform with Trump though; he created Fauci. He elevated Fauci, he never fired him. He said that he did everything right during COVID. He claims he saved 100 million lives, you know, with the mRNA vaccine and all this stuff,” DeSantis said.

Medicaid, Autism, and Intellectual Disability

The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of insurance and Medicaid services.

Meghan E. Carey and colleagues have an article at Autism titled "Short report on navigating access to care for Medicaid-enrolled autistic youth and young adults: Examining accrual of intellectual disability diagnoses in adolescence."

Lay Abstract

What is known? In most states, Medicaid waivers provide individuals with an intellectual disability diagnosis generous healthcare coverage throughout adulthood. By comparison, fewer Medicaid programs are available for autistic individuals, and they are more likely to experience disruptions, or gaps, in Medicaid coverage and subsequently not re-enroll.

What this paper adds? One in five autistic individuals with Medicaid coverage between ages 8 and 25 accrued a new intellectual disability diagnosis. The probability of a new intellectual disability diagnosis was higher among those who had previous disruptions in Medicaid coverage.

Implications for research and policy. Expanding Medicaid to cover autistic people of all ages could decrease the need for intellectual disability diagnosis accrual. Input from autistic individuals and their families regarding their health insurance access and healthcare experiences is critically important to understanding next steps for research.

One possibility is that they did not need ID services earlier, or simply fell through the cracks.

The second explanation is that individuals in our sample were diagnosed with ID as a mechanism for retaining or regaining Medicaid coverage not afforded to individuals with ASD alone. Prior research by Shea and colleagues (2022) supports this hypothesis; they observed autistic Medicaid enrollees with ID had half the probability of Medicaid disenrollment compared to those with ASD alone. Given individuals with ID have frequent interactions with the healthcare system (Shea et al., 2018), we expect our eligibility criteria of least 1 + claim in a 12-month period to be appropriate for identifying ID; sensitivity analyses supported robustness of these findings. Because of their established advocacy history people with ID are often more likely to be Medicaid-eligible than autistic people (Rizzolo et al., 2013). While the addition of an ID diagnosis among autistic people may help maintain Medicaid enrollment, it also could lead to autistic individuals not receiving autism-specific or appropriate healthcare if access is limited to ID-specific services (Shea et al., 2021). Although outpatient behavioral health services are the typical intervention modality recommended for both ASD and ID (Lloyd & Kennedy, 2014), the cognitive deficits observed in ID differ from the social and communication challenges observed in ASD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Donor-Advised Funds and Antivaxxers

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong

Walter Bragman and Alex Kotch at Important Context:

[Fidelity Charitable] gave roughly $1 million to Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by Robert Kennedy Jr. that sows doubt about vaccine safety, and two of its state chapters. Kennedy, who long promoted the debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism, has called the Covid shots an “ethnic bioweapon” and “a crime against humanity.” In a recent post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Children’s Health Defense claimed the mRNA jabs “contaminate” breast milk. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends pregnant and breastfeeding people stay current on their Covid vaccines, including the most recent booster.)

That same fiscal year, Fidelity Charitable also gave $235,000 to anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree’s Informed Consent Action Network — nearly twice the amount from the previous fiscal year. The group includes a section, “Vaccine Safety Debate,” on its website implying that the Department of Health and Human Services has not demonstrated the safety of Covid vaccines.

Fidelity Charitable is not alone in its anti-public-health spending. Throughout the Covid pandemic, big money flowed to groups supposedly promoting public health but in reality were peddling anti-vaccine misinformation, from some of the largest charities in the country, an analysis by Rolling Stone and Important Context has found. We tracked more than $15 million that donor-advised fund sponsors gave in 2020-22 to such groups — the lion’s share of the funds were distributed after the vaccines became available.

Donor-advised funds (DAFs) have become a popular vehicle for wealthy individuals and foundations to distribute cash — and remain under the radar. Functionally, these entities operate as passthrough organizations: Donors deposit money into an account managed by a DAF sponsor like Fidelity Charitable, which disburses it with the donor’s input. While donor clients “advise” the sponsor, the sponsor has full legal control of the money and where it ends up. Typically, the sponsors’ board of trustees has the final say.

Retracted Article on Private Equity

The Politics of Autism includes an extensive discussion of autism service providers.  Private equity firms now own many of them.  There are critics.

Retraction Watch:

 An article that proposed potential benefits of private equity firms investing in autism service providers has been removed from the journal in which it was published.

The article, “Private equity investment: Friend or foe to applied behavior analysis?” was originally published in the International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education as part of a January 2023 special issue devoted to applied behavior analysis (ABA) for autism.

... 

The sole author of the article, Sara Gershfeld Litvak, “decided to retract the article due to her commitment to scientific integrity and ethical values,” following “a rigorous review process,” according to the undated retraction notice on page 266 of the special issue. Litvak is founder and CEO of the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence (BHCOE), a company that offers accreditation for organizations that provide ABA services, and she co-founded the Autism Investor Summit, an annual meeting focused on the business side of autism services. She is also an advisory board member for Calex Partners, a firm that provides advice on mergers and acquisitions for autism-related businesses.

The original retraction notice did not mention any specific issues with the article, which is no longer available on the journal’s website. A correction notice to the issue’s introduction, published 4 October, says that the editors retracted Litvak’s article “due to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that led to numerous inaccuracies within the reference and the body of the paper.” A close examination of a PDF copy of the article obtained by Spectrum and Retraction Watch revealed that nearly two-thirds of the article’s references appear to not exist.

Asthma and Autism

  In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what causes the condition. 

Jan Green at Kaiser Permanente:

Mothers with asthma or obesity during pregnancy had higher rates of children diagnosed with autism, according to a new Kaiser Permanente analysis published in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.

The study adds to evidence that maternal inflammation could affect neurodevelopment in children, said study lead author Lisa Croen, PhD, a senior research scientist and director of the Autism Research Program in the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.


“There have been studies showing that conditions during pregnancy, such as obesity, infection, fever, and gestational diabetes are related to autism,” Croen said. “We wanted to look at these factors both individually and in combination to find out if there is a profile of mothers who have a higher likelihood of having an autistic child.”

The analysis found mothers with asthma were 62% more likely to deliver an infant later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder; developmental disabilities were 30% more likely. In mothers with obesity, autism was 51% more likely, and risk increased with extreme obesity.

The association with autism was even stronger among mothers with both asthma and obesity.

There is a very long and growing list of other correlates, risk factors, and possible causes that have been the subject of serious studies: 

1. Inflammatory bowel disease;
2. Pesticides;
3. Air pollution and proximity to freeways;
4. Maternal thyroid issues;
5. Autoimmune disorders;
6. Induced labor;
7. Preterm birth;
8. Fever;  
9. Birth by cesarean section;
10. Anesthesia during cesarean sections;
11. Maternal and paternal obesity;
12. Maternal diabetes;
13. Maternal and paternal age;
14. Grandparental age;
15. Maternal post-traumatic stress disorder;
16. Maternal anorexia;
17. Smoking during pregnancy;
18. Cannabis use during pregnancy;
19. Antidepressant use during pregnancy;
20. Polycystic ovary syndrome;
21. Infant opioid withdrawal;
22. Zinc deficiency;
23. Sulfate deficiency;
24. Processed foods;
25. Maternal occupational exposure to solvents;
26. Congenital heart disease;
27. Insufficient placental allopregnanolone.
28. Estrogen in the womb;
29. Morning sickness;
30. Paternal family history;
31. Parental preterm birth;
32. Antiseizure meds
33. Location of forebears
34. Lithium
35. Aspartame
36. BPA
37. Brain inflammation

 

Among the Hamas Victims: An Autistic Girl

 From The Times of Israel:

The bodies of Noya Dan, a 12-year-old Israeli girl with autism, and her grandmother Carmela, 80 — who were initially believed to have been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza — have been found, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

J.K. Rowling had retweeted a post highlighting the plight of Dan, who was a big Harry Potter fan.

No words💔 pic.twitter.com/w5RcG5ibDe

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) October 19, 2023

Autism Kits in Utah Ambulances

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between first responders and autistic people. 

Scott McKane at KSTU-TV, Salt Lake City:

Emergency medical technicians in Utah are hoping to better respond to autistic patients with special kits that are now in ambulances across the state.

John Wilson Autism Kits are now in every single Gold Cross ambulance in Utah. The kits are named after the son of a Payson paramedic who learned some crucial tips trying to calm his own autistic son during stressful situations.

Jeff Wilson learned a lot while training to be a paramedic but he said one thing he and many other EMTs were not prepared for is dealing with individuals who are on the autism spectrum.

“When you have that added layer of stress it gets really chaotic in behavior a lot of times," he explained. "It presents safety issues, on our end and on the children's or the adult's end who are on the spectrum.”

When Wilson's son, John, was diagnosed with autism, a new world of learning was opened to him.

Wilson and his wife began using American sign language and learned about tools, like colorful "popper" bracelets, that can help calm an individual on the spectrum.

So Wilson made a kit, named after his son, which also includes sound-reducing headphones and a sign language translation paper.

Vaccine Hesitancy and Alternative Medicine

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong

Angelo Fasce and colleagues have an article at Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics   titled "Endorsement of alternative medicine and vaccine hesitancy among physicians: A cross-sectional study in four European countries"

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy has become a threat to public health, especially as it is a phenomenon that has also been observed among healthcare professionals. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and vaccination attitudes and behaviors among healthcare professionals, using a cross-sectional sample of physicians with vaccination responsibilities from four European countries: Germany, Finland, Portugal, and France (total N = 2,787). Our results suggest that, in all the participating countries, CAM endorsement is associated with lower frequency of vaccine recommendation, lower self-vaccination rates, and being more open to patients delaying vaccination, with these relationships being mediated by distrust in vaccines. A latent profile analysis revealed that a profile characterized by higher-than-average CAM endorsement and lower-than-average confidence and recommendation of vaccines occurs, to some degree, among 19% of the total sample, although these percentages varied from one country to another: 23.72% in Germany, 17.83% in France, 9.77% in Finland, and 5.86% in Portugal. These results constitute a call to consider health care professionals’ attitudes toward CAM as a factor that could hinder the implementation of immunization campaigns.

From the article

Even though vaccinations are one of the most beneficial medical advances in human history, they have been subject to controversy since the first mass vaccination campaigns—e.g., the numerous anti-vaccination leagues that emerged in the U.S. during the last quarter of the 19th century.Citation1,Citation2 Vaccine hesitancy is a complex phenomenon that encompasses various types and degrees of negative attitudes and behaviors—e.g., outright rejection, delay, or reluctant acceptance of vaccination.Citation3 There are several sources of vaccine hesitancy among the general population, such as complacency, distrust, and conspiracy beliefs,Citation4 which vary depending on the socio-political context and the type of vaccination. For example, complacency (i.e., unwillingness to get vaccinated due to low perceived risk of vaccine-preventable diseases) is particularly salient in relation to the influenza vaccine,Citation5 whereas conspiracy beliefs and science-related populism tend to manifest during threatening and politically charged events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.Citation6,Citation7 Numerous studies have also observed vaccine hesitant attitudes among health care professionals (HCPs), which are reflected in lower rates of self-vaccination and vaccine recommendation to patients.Citation8

Prior studies among the general population and nurses suggest that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is positively related to vaccine hesitancy.Citation9–14 CAM is defined by the World Health Organization as “a broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country’s own traditional or conventional medicine and are not fully integrated into the dominant health care system”Citation15—in Western societies: homeopathy, acupuncture, energy and crystal healing, reflexology, magnet therapy, or anthroposophic medicine.Citation16–18 Due to its potential effect on willingness to recommend and receive vaccines, the analysis of the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and CAM endorsement among physicians is particularly relevant due to their direct contact with the general public and vulnerable populations, as well as to their key role in patients’ vaccine-related decision-making processes.Citation19,Citation20

Brain Inflammation

  In The Politics of Autism, I discuss various ideas about what causes the condition. 

A release from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM):

Severe inflammation in early childhood is a clinically known risk factor for developing autism and schizophrenia. Now, for the first time, scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have discovered that inflammation alters the development of vulnerable brain cells, and this could have mechanistic links to neurodevelopmental disorders. This finding could lead to treatments for many different childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorders.

Using single-cell genomics to study the brains of children who died from inflammatory conditions—such as a bacterial or viral infections or asthma—along with those who died from a sudden accident, researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) led a study that found inflammation in early childhood prevents specific neurons in the cerebellum from maturing completely. The cerebellum is a brain region responsible for motor control and higher cognitive functions used in language, social skills, and emotional regulation.

Faculty from UMSOM’s Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS), Department of Pharmacology, and the University of Maryland-Medicine Institute of Neuroscience Discovery (UM-MIND) conducted the research. The study appears in the October issue of Science Translational Medicine. It is part of a collection of nearly 30 papers describing the development and diversity of cell types in the human brain. All of these studies were coordinated by the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative Cell Census Network, a multisite consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Brain inflammation is just one of a very long and growing list of other correlates, risk factors, and possible causes that have been the subject of serious studies:

1. Inflammatory bowel disease;
2. Pesticides;
3. Air pollution and proximity to freeways;
4. Maternal thyroid issues;
5. Autoimmune disorders;
6. Induced labor;
7. Preterm birth;
8. Fever;  
9. Birth by cesarean section;
10. Anesthesia during cesarean sections;
11. Maternal and paternal obesity;
12. Maternal diabetes;
13. Maternal and paternal age;
14. Grandparental age;
15. Maternal post-traumatic stress disorder;
16. Maternal anorexia;
17. Smoking during pregnancy;
18. Cannabis use during pregnancy;
19. Antidepressant use during pregnancy;
20. Polycystic ovary syndrome;
21. Infant opioid withdrawal;
22. Zinc deficiency;
23. Sulfate deficiency;
24. Processed foods;
25. Maternal occupational exposure to solvents;
26. Congenital heart disease;
27. Insufficient placental allopregnanolone.
28. Estrogen in the womb;
29. Morning sickness;
30. Paternal family history;
31. Parental preterm birth;
32. Antiseizure meds
33. Location of forebears
34. Lithium
35. Aspartame
36. BPA