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New York: A new study has refuted the widespread perception that sickness during pregnancy causes autism.
The study showed that nearly all of these "associations" can otherwise be explained by factors such as genetics, exposure to pollution, and access to healthcare.
Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health, the study revealed that, of the few conditions truly associated with autism, all were actually complications with the fetus — leading the authors to believe that those symptoms were early signs of autism in the child and not the cause of it.
"Our study shows that there is no convincing evidence that any of these other diagnoses in the mother can cause autism," said study senior author Magdalena Janecka, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and in the Department of Population Health, at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Publishing in the journal Nature Medicine online Jan. 31, 2025 the study included an analysis of the medical histories of more than 1.1 million pregnancies (among 600,000 mothers) from a national registry in Denmark.
Unlike medical records in the United States, that are often scattered among many different medical providers an individual sees during their lifetime, in Denmark all of an individual's health records are consolidated under a single government-issued number.
This enabled researchers to check each woman for more than 1,700 distinct diagnoses as defined by international standards, known as ICD-10 codes.
From these, researchers focused their analysis on those diagnosed in at least 0.1% of pregnancies (236 diagnoses).
"We believe our study is the first to comprehensively examine the entire medical history of the mother and explore a wide range of possible associations, controlling for multiple concurrent conditions and confounding factors," said study lead author Vahe Khachadourian, MD, PhD, MPH, a research assistant professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
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