Currently, Autism Spectrum Syndrome is the most prevalent childhood disability, rather than Down syndrome, childhood cancer and diabetes together. That is why researchers work to find causes that help prevent it, if possible.
One of the most important studies conducted on the subject with 2 million people in Sweden links pregnancy infections with an increased risk of autism. Scientists have concluded that having an infection during pregnancy increases the risk of having a child with autism by 37 percent.
It is not the first time that gestation related to the disorder is discussed. Evidence had already been found that autism could originate in pregnancy during brain formation, due to an interrupted development in the outer layers.
This large study in Denmark found that 903 people with autism and 61,642 people without the disorder were born to women who were hospitalized with an infection during pregnancy, regardless of whether the infection was bacterial, viral or caused by other unknown pathogens. This translates into an increased risk of having a child with autism 37 percent.
Still, according to Alan Brown, author of the study and professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, "these cases only represent - probably - very serious infections, so they may not be generalizable to all infections throughout the population".
They do not specify how infections in the brain of the baby in formation could affect during pregnancy. It is just a first brushstroke, but it means a starting point that would allow further study of the origin of autism.
