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Interesting. Mutations have their uses, but not all. The increasing rates of Autism now are most likely the result of increasingly advanced maternal age for pr

Interesting. Mutations have their uses, but not all. The increasing rates of Autism now are most likely the result of increasingly advanced maternal age for pregnancies. Healthy BMI, cardiovascular fitness, and youth are some of the key factors to a healthy pregnancy. Edit: I didn't mean to say that advanced maternal age is the "only" reason for autism. I was just quoting what I was taught to be one of the main factors for the increasing rates of autism. Some can argue it's increased testing, etc.

irrational 6y ago
Maybe... but anecdotally we had an autistic son born when my wife was 26. But we later had 4 more children (including 2 more boys) who were born throughout her 30s and none of them are autistic. I think there is more going on than simple advanced maternal age.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Was that a difficult conversation with your wife about whether to keep trying for kids knowing your first was autistic?
  - zikzak 6y ago
    I don't know about this person but I have an acquaintance who is a autistic and has three children, all on the spectrum, and they love them all. It never occurred to them that they should not have more children.
    - david-gpu 6y ago
      I know a couple that underwent sterilization because they did not want a younger sibling to be burdened with the care of an autistic older brother. They were also concerned that they would not be able to adequately raise another child while also caring their autistic firstborn.
      - zikzak 6y ago
        I don't judge, it's a very personal decision and there's so much that goes into raising any child. Our two anecdotes illustrate how easy it is to find people at either end of this continuum. This stuff is very difficult for people to talk about.
  - irrational 6y ago
    No, we never had any sort of conversation of that sort.
  - senorsmile 6y ago
    I find this a strange thing to ask. An autist is defined as such by having the following distinct characteristics that make them unique (I have customized each criterion based on myself and my children): - difficulty in social interactions (with neurotypicals) - repetitive behaviors, superior memory and highly focused interests resulting in expert level knowledge - greater sensitivities, physically and emotionally (when compared to neurotypicals. If I had had a neurotypical child, I'd be worried that I wouldn't know how to relate to them and that they'd have to try much harder to succeed.
- hereme888 6y ago
  Oh for sure there's more to it than advanced maternal age. These things are also probabilistic to some degree (X chances of having a child with X disease). I know many women who gave birth in their 40s to healthy children.
amelius 6y ago
Source?
- hereme888 6y ago
  The OBGYN director taught me this during a lecture at my hospital (I'm a medical student). He's also a PhD. It was casual conversation, so I don't have the sources.
- icelancer 6y ago
  https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age-autism-explained/ https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age-autism-e...
QuercusMax 6y ago
That certainly doesn't explain an awful lot of cases. Two of the most fit women I knew had autistic kids in their early 20s. And "blame the mother" has a really bad history for autism.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Surely increased emphasis on actually diagnosing it has to be one of the bigger drivers.
- astrange 6y ago
  I once read a theory that it was caused by different prenatal nutrition and lack of Vitamin D, which of course involves the mother but I wouldn't call blaming her since, as they say, it takes a village. Not sure if people currently believe this or not.
  - madamelic 6y ago
    > lack of vitamin D Wouldn't that mean we would see more autistic kids further away from the equator and born from April to June?
    - ruined 6y ago
      autism does correlate with birth month https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296777/?report=classic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296777/?report... and does seem to be more prevalent in particular latitudes, though that may be an effect of social/industrial/economic conditions.
      - madamelic 6y ago
        Thanks! That was the perfect paper.
      - ArkanExplorer 6y ago
        Somali children in Sweden are 3-4x more likely to be Autistic than Swedish children: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23221308_Prevalence_of_autism_in_children_born_to_Somali_parents_living_in_Sweden_A_brief_report https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23221308_Prevalence... 73% of pregnant Somali women in Sweden are Vitamin D deficient vs 5% of pregnant Swedish women: https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vitamin-dbinding-protein-in-somali-women-living-in-sweden-was-low-and-unaffectedby-treatment-8802.html https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vitamin-dbinding-pr...
h0l0cube 6y ago
> The increasing rates of Autism now are most likely the result of increasingly advanced maternal age for pregnancies Wiki seems to say it's either even split between parents, or leans paternal: > It is not known whether mutations that arise spontaneously in autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders come mainly from the mother or the father, or whether the mutations are associated with parental age.[74] However, recent studies have identified advancing paternal age as a significant indicator for ASD. There's also the other factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#Causing_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#Causing... But as another mentioned, the increased awareness and access to medical professionals could also explain an upward trend in diagnosis.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  > the increased awareness and access to medical professionals could also explain an upward trend in diagnosis. I don't see how any other hypothesis can even be considered until this is controlled for. How many people diagnosed as autistic today would have, had they lived in the past, been considered as having mental illness or intellectual disability? Would those who are high-functioning even be diagnosed as having anything at all, or just thought of as eccentric or a little touched?
  - h0l0cube 6y ago
    What bothers me more is that people on this forum, which is most likely over-represented by the broad autism phenotype, and so quick to 'other' autism. Might not even have dawned on them that they might be talking a little about themselves.
    - schwartzworld 6y ago
      Fair point.
dd36 6y ago
It’s the Back to Sleep campaign that started in the 90s. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav5188/tab-article-info https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav5188/tab-art... Basically, sleeping is important to brain development in new borns and infants and forced back sleeping is hugely disruptive. Hence the increase in autism rates for kids born in 90s and later.
- hattar 6y ago
  It seems like a large leap from “voles develop social bonding problems when their sleep is disrupted in early life” to “making babies sleep on their backs increases the rate of autism”. Is there any other data that would indicate a correlation between back sleeping in infants and autism rates?
  - dd36 6y ago
    That’s actually not what made the connection for me. I noticed my son developed much more quickly than his peers and we stomach slept him. Also my friends got much worse sleep than we did, which surely meant so did their babies. My son hated back sleeping. He’d sleep 3 hours at a time versus through the night. So I looked up when forced back sleeping became a thing and it was strongly correlated to when autism exploded. I think there may be a Euro study. Then I read this recently https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba0398 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba0398 And I emailed the authors about my theory and they sent me the voles study. They can’t do a human study for ethical reasons. Maybe they can find a natural study ala Israel and peanut butter puffs but forced back sleeping is prevalent worldwide as it reduces SIDS. We were comfortable stomach sleeping my son with good air circulation because of this study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/380273 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Back sleeping may have adverse side effects beyond low sleep quality for baby and parents. Frankly, it’s well established that sleep matters a lot for all brains. It’s not hard to make the leap that reduced sleep quality during important stages of life might matter a lot.
BurnAphterRead 6y ago
So, this is to be taken with a grain of salt: A nurse once told me about this. I guess in the 90's(?) or so, there were a lot of children that were cognitively deficient to the extent that they required specialized care and such, but didn't necessarily fall into a category that would allot the parents funding. Lo and behold, autism becomes one of those categories, and the medical industrial complex has no qualms helping families to find funding. Autism is a perfect dragnet, lots of features to latch on to. Something like that. So maybe a lot of the autism diagnoses fall into the category of "we can't define this, but this family is fucked without the funds, so that's autism." But I never validated his claims, just food for thought. Good luck in the rabbit hole.

irrational 6y ago

Maybe... but anecdotally we had an autistic son born when my wife was 26. But we later had 4 more children (including 2 more boys) who were born throughout her 30s and none of them are autistic. I think there is more going on than simple advanced maternal age.

jimbob45 6y ago
Was that a difficult conversation with your wife about whether to keep trying for kids knowing your first was autistic?
- zikzak 6y ago
  I don't know about this person but I have an acquaintance who is a autistic and has three children, all on the spectrum, and they love them all. It never occurred to them that they should not have more children.
  - david-gpu 6y ago
    I know a couple that underwent sterilization because they did not want a younger sibling to be burdened with the care of an autistic older brother. They were also concerned that they would not be able to adequately raise another child while also caring their autistic firstborn.
    - zikzak 6y ago
      I don't judge, it's a very personal decision and there's so much that goes into raising any child. Our two anecdotes illustrate how easy it is to find people at either end of this continuum. This stuff is very difficult for people to talk about.
- irrational 6y ago
  No, we never had any sort of conversation of that sort.
- senorsmile 6y ago
  I find this a strange thing to ask. An autist is defined as such by having the following distinct characteristics that make them unique (I have customized each criterion based on myself and my children): - difficulty in social interactions (with neurotypicals) - repetitive behaviors, superior memory and highly focused interests resulting in expert level knowledge - greater sensitivities, physically and emotionally (when compared to neurotypicals. If I had had a neurotypical child, I'd be worried that I wouldn't know how to relate to them and that they'd have to try much harder to succeed.
hereme888 6y ago
Oh for sure there's more to it than advanced maternal age. These things are also probabilistic to some degree (X chances of having a child with X disease). I know many women who gave birth in their 40s to healthy children.

amelius 6y ago

Source?

hereme888 6y ago
The OBGYN director taught me this during a lecture at my hospital (I'm a medical student). He's also a PhD. It was casual conversation, so I don't have the sources.
icelancer 6y ago
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age-autism-explained/ https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age-autism-e...

QuercusMax 6y ago

That certainly doesn't explain an awful lot of cases. Two of the most fit women I knew had autistic kids in their early 20s. And "blame the mother" has a really bad history for autism.

notahacker 6y ago
Surely increased emphasis on actually diagnosing it has to be one of the bigger drivers.
astrange 6y ago
I once read a theory that it was caused by different prenatal nutrition and lack of Vitamin D, which of course involves the mother but I wouldn't call blaming her since, as they say, it takes a village. Not sure if people currently believe this or not.
- madamelic 6y ago
  > lack of vitamin D Wouldn't that mean we would see more autistic kids further away from the equator and born from April to June?
  - ruined 6y ago
    autism does correlate with birth month https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296777/?report=classic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296777/?report... and does seem to be more prevalent in particular latitudes, though that may be an effect of social/industrial/economic conditions.
    - madamelic 6y ago
      Thanks! That was the perfect paper.
    - ArkanExplorer 6y ago
      Somali children in Sweden are 3-4x more likely to be Autistic than Swedish children: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23221308_Prevalence_of_autism_in_children_born_to_Somali_parents_living_in_Sweden_A_brief_report https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23221308_Prevalence... 73% of pregnant Somali women in Sweden are Vitamin D deficient vs 5% of pregnant Swedish women: https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vitamin-dbinding-protein-in-somali-women-living-in-sweden-was-low-and-unaffectedby-treatment-8802.html https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vitamin-dbinding-pr...

h0l0cube 6y ago

> The increasing rates of Autism now are most likely the result of increasingly advanced maternal age for pregnancies Wiki seems to say it's either even split between parents, or leans paternal: > It is not known whether mutations that arise spontaneously in autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders come mainly from the mother or the father, or whether the mutations are associated with parental age.[74] However, recent studies have identified advancing paternal age as a significant indicator for ASD. There's also the other factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#Causing_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#Causing... But as another mentioned, the increased awareness and access to medical professionals could also explain an upward trend in diagnosis.

schwartzworld 6y ago
> the increased awareness and access to medical professionals could also explain an upward trend in diagnosis. I don't see how any other hypothesis can even be considered until this is controlled for. How many people diagnosed as autistic today would have, had they lived in the past, been considered as having mental illness or intellectual disability? Would those who are high-functioning even be diagnosed as having anything at all, or just thought of as eccentric or a little touched?
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  What bothers me more is that people on this forum, which is most likely over-represented by the broad autism phenotype, and so quick to 'other' autism. Might not even have dawned on them that they might be talking a little about themselves.
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    Fair point.

dd36 6y ago

It’s the Back to Sleep campaign that started in the 90s. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav5188/tab-article-info https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav5188/tab-art... Basically, sleeping is important to brain development in new borns and infants and forced back sleeping is hugely disruptive. Hence the increase in autism rates for kids born in 90s and later.

hattar 6y ago
It seems like a large leap from “voles develop social bonding problems when their sleep is disrupted in early life” to “making babies sleep on their backs increases the rate of autism”. Is there any other data that would indicate a correlation between back sleeping in infants and autism rates?
- dd36 6y ago
  That’s actually not what made the connection for me. I noticed my son developed much more quickly than his peers and we stomach slept him. Also my friends got much worse sleep than we did, which surely meant so did their babies. My son hated back sleeping. He’d sleep 3 hours at a time versus through the night. So I looked up when forced back sleeping became a thing and it was strongly correlated to when autism exploded. I think there may be a Euro study. Then I read this recently https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba0398 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba0398 And I emailed the authors about my theory and they sent me the voles study. They can’t do a human study for ethical reasons. Maybe they can find a natural study ala Israel and peanut butter puffs but forced back sleeping is prevalent worldwide as it reduces SIDS. We were comfortable stomach sleeping my son with good air circulation because of this study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/380273 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/... Back sleeping may have adverse side effects beyond low sleep quality for baby and parents. Frankly, it’s well established that sleep matters a lot for all brains. It’s not hard to make the leap that reduced sleep quality during important stages of life might matter a lot.

BurnAphterRead 6y ago

So, this is to be taken with a grain of salt: A nurse once told me about this. I guess in the 90's(?) or so, there were a lot of children that were cognitively deficient to the extent that they required specialized care and such, but didn't necessarily fall into a category that would allot the parents funding. Lo and behold, autism becomes one of those categories, and the medical industrial complex has no qualms helping families to find funding. Autism is a perfect dragnet, lots of features to latch on to. Something like that. So maybe a lot of the autism diagnoses fall into the category of "we can't define this, but this family is fucked without the funds, so that's autism." But I never validated his claims, just food for thought. Good luck in the rabbit hole.