Childhood abuse linked to autism in offspring

• Autores: Peter Aldhous
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2910, 2013, pág. 13
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Women who were abused in childhood are more likely to have children with autism, a new epidemiological study suggests. Andrea Roberts of the Harvard School of Public Health and her colleagues turned to the Nurses' Health Study II, which includes almost 55,000 women in the US who had indicated if they had a child with autism spectrum disorder and also answered a questionnaire about their experience of abuse as a child. There was a clear link between the amount of abuse received and the risk at having an autistic child. The associations get stronger as the level of abuse increases, Roberts says. After accounting for demographic factors such as age and socio-econornic status, the 2% of women who reported the most serious childhood abuse were about 3.5 times as likely to have a child with autism as those who reported no abuse at all.