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Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Study Finds Link Between Autism and Obesity During Pregnancy

Author:     Amina Khan AMINA KHAN
Source:     Los Angeles Times
Publication Date:     April 8, 2012, 9:44 p.m.
 Link: Study Finds Link Between Autism and Obesity During Pregnancy
Stephan:   People worry about over-population. I'm not so sure. Between climate change and bad life habits, I think we are going to kill hundreds of millions over the next few decades, and those children who are born will have a much higher incidence of illness. Coupled with the low birth rates in almost all developed nations, and the picture is no longer the linear narrative of over population. How important is this linkage between obesity and autism? Two-thirds of the adult women in the U.S. are over weight, and half are morbidly obese. And, once again it is very state specific. In those states with Theo-rightist driven social policies obesity is much greater. In fact, as I travel around the U.S. recently, I have found it visually quite amazing. In Seattle you don't see that many obese people. I am sitting in a late night restaurant in Tucson right now finishing SR and two thirds of the women, mostly in their 20s to 30s, are obese. One hundred to 150 pounds overweight seems typical. Arizona, an almost fanatically red state, has a major health problem in just this one issue. And they have just cut out almost all support for women's health care.

Pregnant women might now have one more good reason to watch their diet and exercise: A new study links autism and developmental delays in young children to metabolic conditions, like obesity and diabetes, in their mothers.

The findings, published in Monday’s edition of the journal Pediatrics, found that women who had diabetes or hypertension or were obese were 1.61 times as likely as healthy women to have children with autism spectrum disorders. They also were 2.35 times as likely to have children with developmental delays.

Child development experts said the findings were interesting but that it would be premature to suggest that the results could help explain the dramatic rise in diagnosed cases of autism over the last decade.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the autism rate among 8-year-olds in the U.S. had risen to 1 in 88, from 1 in 110 a few years earlier. Some of the change reflects a growing awareness of the disorder that leads to more diagnoses. Whether there is an actual increase in affected children is a source of great debate.

Several studies since the 1990s have indicated that there may be a link between diabetes in mothers and developmental delays […]

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