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Study Suggests Link Between Autism and Parents' Ages
Filed under: In The News
As parents and researchers struggle and debate about the cause of the autism epidemic -- or if there's even an epidemic at all -- a new study suggests a link between the disorder and parents' ages.
A study published Feb. 8 in the journal Autism Research concludes that older mothers are more likely than younger ones to have a child with autism. In addition, older fathers significantly contribute to the risk of autism when their partners are under 30.
The New York Times reports researchers analyzed almost five million births in California during the 1990s. Some 12,159 of those children were diagnosed with autism.
According to the Times, previous research concluded that autism diagnoses grew with the age of the father. In this latest study, researchers found when the father was older than 40 and the mother was younger than 30, the autism rate was 59 percent higher than it was for younger men. When the mothers were over 30, that number was about 12 percent.
In addition, the Times reports, every five-year increase in a mother's age raised the risk of autism by 18 percent. A 40-year-old woman's risk was 50 percent greater than that of a woman who became a mother in her late 20s -- and 77 percent higher than that of a woman under 25.
"The rise in autism is occurring among children of parents of all ages," the study's lead author Janie F. Shelton, a graduate student in epidemiology at the University of California, tells the Times. "We can't say that the shifting trend of maternal age is responsible for the increased rates of autism."
According to Scientific American magazine, one in 5,000 children were considered autistic in 1980s. That number is now about one in 166.
Recent scientific studies have refuted the belief of many parents that there is a link between autism and childhood vaccines, leading to fresh speculation on what is causing the epidemic.
If there is an epidemic, that is. The Scientific American article suggests there may not be an autism epidemic so much as a diagnosis epidemic.
Authors of the new study say its numbers can be tricky.
One of the authors, Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a psychiatrist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, tells the Times that mothers and fathers were usually so close in age that small statistical differences could appear to shift the effect of advanced age from one parent to another.
"It's important we not turn around and blame mothers," Malaspina tells the newspaper. "The evidence is very, very strong that there is a paternal age effect."
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ReaderComments (Page 2 of 2)
2-10-2010 @ 12:42AM
armywifetx said...Well, i have four children the oldest 16 years old and i gave birth to him when I was only 16 he is Autistic. I was a pretty healthy teen other than being a teen mom. He was bottle fed. I have three other children ages 15,11, and three. None of them with autistic and those three were exclusively breast fed. With so many kids with the syndrome I feel like it's something in the formula or bottles themselves that some kids can handle better than others. All the other couples I know with autistic children did not breast feed them and yet breastfed the siblings and have the same results as I do. One child with the syndrome and the others without. I wish they would do a study on how many breast fed children have autism compared to bottle fed. I don't feel like age is a big factor. My husband is in the army and has been deployed three times. I was reading that alot of millitary children of deployed soldiers also have an increase of having a child who is autistic.
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2-10-2010 @ 12:25PM
tanYaC2 said...i would like to talk to you about autism...if you would like to to me email me at nicegirl06@live.com thanks
2-10-2010 @ 2:03AM
nene said...I agree with your comment that there should be studies conducted on the effect of breast feeding vs bottle feeding as it relates to autism cases. There may very well be a link. The more we know concerning autism and its potential causes, the better prepared we will be in dealing with it. Great comment and observation armywifetx.
2-10-2010 @ 2:19AM
nene said...I agree that there needs to be research conducted regarding autism as it relates to breast fed versus bottled fed babies. There may indeed be a link. The more we know about autism, the better prepared we will be in dealing with it. Great comment and observation armwifetx.
2-10-2010 @ 12:56AM
tanYaC2 said...my son is 7 and autistic. i wish there was more programs in my area available...i havent heard him speak a word since he was 1 and a half...
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2-10-2010 @ 1:16AM
kimberly said...well in response to your breastfeeding vs bottle feeding comment, i do not agree with u. im a very young and healthy mother of two. im only 20 and my girls are 3yrs and 18mnths. i did not breast feed either one of them and they are perfectly normal. infact, my oldest is ahead of other kids her age and she was a preemie!
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2-10-2010 @ 1:33AM
Glynn said...It makes sense that an older woman's eggs might not be as "fresh," so to speak, as a younger woman's, which might contribute to problems in the child later on. But that still doesn't explain the autistic children born to younger women.
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2-10-2010 @ 8:28AM
robert said...this sounds like an imaginary world of abortion promotion. You love who God gives you.
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2-10-2010 @ 3:53PM
robert said...some of the greatest speakers are autistic. At five, I couldn't say my name. Your kid will catch on.
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2-10-2010 @ 1:47PM
Sister said...I think autism might just be due to a coupling of the parents ages and a random occurrence of birth. Much as I hate to admit it, I was not living a very healthy lifestyle when pregnant with my first three kids. But I was under age 35 when I had them. Had my last baby at 39, no problems other than severe asthma. Nothing that effected her motor skills at all. My sister, on the other hand, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS kept to a strictly healthy regimine of the right foods, excercise and prenatal care. Her last child was born when she was 37 (at the same time as my last child was born, we went through all of our preganancies together), and the poor boy has the type of autism that makes it difficult to control him. Her (second) husband (the child's father) is an older man, in his sixties, maybe that coupled with the fact of her being in her late thirties factors in somehow because her other 3 children have no problems and their father was closer in age to my sister when they were born. My husband is only two years older than me.
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