NASET News Alert

Parental Birth Abnormalities and Offspring’s Autism Linked

January 14, 2021

In a study of medical registry records of nearly 400,000 parent-child pairs from Denmark, a Yale School of Public Health study found that parents who were themselves born very prematurely were nearly twice as likely to have children with autism spectrum disorder. The study, recently published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, provides solid evidence that autism spectrum disorder risk factors can span multiple generations — a new hypothesis that previously lacked much empirical evidence in humans. According to senior author Zeyan Liew, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, these findings can help spark further research into the underlying mechanisms of autism risk transmission in families.  “It’s already well established that preterm birth and low birth weight of the child are risk factors for autism,” he said. “But this is the first study to show that parental preterm birth and low birth weight might carry some risk for their future offspring as well.” Read More