Practical Practitioner
By: Pamela Egan, FNP-C CDE
Autism linked to mother's illnesses
A Kaiser Permanente study, published in Archives of Pediatrics and adolescent Medicine in February, looked at the maternal history of 420 children with autism born between 1995 and 1999. The study found that pregnant women with asthma, allergies or psoriasis had a higher risk of having an autistic child.
The risk of having an autistic child was doubled if the mother had a disease flare-up during the second trimester. Researchers theorize that the flare may have caused the mother's immune system to produce cytokines, which are associated with inflammation and could have damaged fetal brain development.
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