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Closely spaced pregnancies may increase autism risk
The likelihood that a child develops autism may be tied to how close together a mother spaces the births of her children, according to research in the journal Pediatrics. The new study found that children conceived before their older sibling was a year old were three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than children spaced at least three years apart.What seems to be driving this increase? Study author Keely Cheslack-Postava, Ph.D., from Columbia University in New York says that she and her fellow researchers did not investigate this specifically, but they suspect mothers may not have had enough time between pregnancies to build up the much needed nutrient reserves of folate and iron, important to a developing fetus. This would suggest that older siblings have a lower risk from autism, but that would interfere with the idea that autism is dependent on the age of the parents. It still doesn't explain why the incidence of autism has gone from 1/10,000 to 1/100. Posted by: gorb 2011-01-10 |
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