There's no cause. It's genetic. You might have needed anti depressants as you are HF. That's the common denominator.

I echo this completely

I mean this kindly OP, I have DC with autism. It is more than enough stress on anyone parenting a child with ASD diagnosis without adding your own guilt about what caused it to the process. What good would that do us to really know anyway. What would it change for you? Your kids?

Nobody knows the exact cause but it’s most likely to be your and your partner’s own genetics. Which you didn’t cause and you can’t control. Nobody asks to be born and nobody asks for a genotype. So as parents of children with additional needs we all have to make the most of the cards we are dealt, and live in the now.

Especially in this run up to a general election which will provide a government for the next five years of all of our kids’ childhoods. My advice is to focus on looking to the future and thinking about the support you might need to get them through this next period.

It was 2008 so a long time ago now.

When did you have them? When I had them for my eldest son in 2017 I wasn’t given any information. When I had my youngest last year; they provided a fact sheet and links to research then so I assumed it was fairly recent research.

Or you all ate bananas on a Tuesday … I think the fact we don’t know despite A LOT of interest is telling.

Interesting about the prenatal steroids. I don't recall being told of any side effects or there being any real choice about taking them or not. I'd never thought about potential side effects of these.

Or your depression is linked to the same genetic variations in you that are present in autistic individuals in whom depression is more common ?

I was on Sertraline with my 2nd child who has suspected ASD and I do feel that this potentially contributed in some way. Perhaps it will come out as a potential cause later down the line?

@mossylog I haven't read the full paper just the article. I think you may be misinterpreting the findings somewhat. The paper identifies ~200 inherited genes that are "vulnerable to mutation". It also specifically refers to "children affected with severe ASD".

I'm work in STEM and read hundreds, maybe thousands of articles like that per year, and something like a couple of papers a week. It's like Chinese whispers, a paper will propose a particular hypothesis, the science journals will summarise the paper but give it catchy headline. Mainstream media and others will take the headline and maybe skim the article, but rarely read the paper, let alone the references. By the time the information gets to social media the actual hypothesis can be wildly misinterpreted. In both mainstream and social media I've even seen the details and nuances of a paper completely reversed.

In this case you've linked to the article, which is great, and the article is very well written, clear and concise. The head line is somewhat misleading (it misses out the word "severe" in front of autism). The article also raises more questions than it answers.

I'd urge you to be very careful before making sweeping statements such as: Not to mention that half of cases of autism are from spontaneous gene mutation , so it can be genetic without being inherited.

It’s an interesting bit of research but I think some of your statements are less science based and more fluffy. You could probably make similar statements about incidence about something that isn’t based in genetics at all or even biology. For example (and I’m making this up as an example it is not a fact). Sexual Abuse often “runs” in families. We know of course this is trauma not genetic. If we talked about twins we could probably find that there were more identical twins who were both abused and carried that trauma forwards than fraternal twins. In the case of autism what could make it more likely that both twins were affected if they were identical? It doesn’t have to be that “they carry the same genes so duh”. It could simply be they are the same sex, after all only a quarter of fraternal twins are boy boy and we know boys are more likely to hit the criteria.
I’m always fascinated by why people want it to be genetic or vaccines or heavy metals or whatever their focus was/is. What makes that answer attractive to them. There’s a lot of resistance to finding a measurable cause and that’s interesting too.

@MaidOfAle , I agree, Sertraline is most likely safe, like I've said before. I'm just saying that the possibility of a link was credible enough for there to have been a lot of research into it. I wasn't arguing against you, but rather the many people in the thread who think autism is always 100% inherited. To these people the idea of medicine having an effect seems absurd.

@TomeTome See this article, or this older one which goes into it a bit more. It's not that the exact causes of autism are fully known, but that there's good evidence that:

1. There's a very large genetic component (identical twins have a 90% chance of both being autistic if one is, though the presentation is apprently often quite different).
2. In the study they looked at the clusters of genes that might be playing a role and showed that in about half the cases, the change was due to mutations rather than Mendelian inheritance.

Not to mention that half of cases of autism are from spontaneous gene mutation , so it can be genetic without being inherited. my understanding was they still didn’t know the cause(s), so where does this statement originate?

Not disputing that some medications can be mutagenic or otherwise cause birth defects. Thalidomide, anyone?

Making the point that medication X's effects don't mean that medication Y has similar effects, especially when medication Y is completely different class of medication.

Each medication has to be assessed individually and the considerable evidence to date is that sertraline is safe during pregnancy.

Not to mention that half of cases of autism are from spontaneous gene mutation , so it can be genetic without being inherited.

The chance of mutation can be increased by having an older parent, or through adverse events in pregancy, hence why there's been so many studies of pregnant mothers who are on medication.

Non-Mendelian inheritance explains how two people can each carry part of the genes for a condition without having the condition themselves and without all of, or even any of, their children having the condition either.

This is like us. Nobody in either of our families have even the slightest of traits. We have 4 children and only 1 is autistic.
I’m told similar to you. It’s tiring.

I think mentioning valproate has distracted from your thread @Guilty85 and I am sorry for that. I think it’s natural to have a niggling worry about a drug you took when pregnant if your child has a disability. I haven’t heard of any link but I think even if it had the teeniest impact on your little one, you didn’t and couldn’t have known. We can only do our best with the information we have at the time. My child is very impacted by his autism and I often wonder if it was something I did.

I give up with this one. Some people absolutely will not listen. My son is severely autistic , my other children don’t have autism, I don’t have autism and neither does my husband. No one in our family has autism. I got told the other day that one of us must be autistic and we just don’t know it . 😂. Made me laugh .

I didn't say "don't be silly dear". I gave facts in an earlier post.

I beg your pardon! I said it was possible. I didn’t say it was likely or proved in any way. I am so far from scaremongering on the internet it’s laughable. Dismissing and minimising women’s fears is NOT helping them because what we need is fact not “don’t be silly dear”.

Much like the measles hysteria. Crazy paranoid UNEDUCATED people on the Internet buying into a crazy theory that jabs cause autism. Guess what now we have measles outbreaks. Also gues what measles kills and disables. Let not do the same with antidepressants eh.
This thread shouldn't surprise me . But it does.

OP I hope you have seen from what the more helpful posters have guided you to that there is no evidence for a link betweén ASD and taking sertraline in pregnancy. Please do not torment yourself. You followed competent medical advice. You did nothing wrong.