Children who are breastfed are less likely to develop neurological conditions, including autism, a new study found.

Of course there are risk factors.

It’s very clearly a huge study.

Other studies have previously shown that autistic women breastfeed at rates comparable to, or greater than, neurotypical women.

There is no denial of the fact that autism is very influenced by genetics. There may be other factors at play.

Autism is genetic. It always was. It always will be. It wasn't invented by people in the 2000s. The sooner everyone accepts this and stops wasting time claiming it is new the better. I don't care if you think your cool grandad didn't have it. He did. That's why you have it too. Full stop, the end. Some mask more than others. There is no risk factor. You're born at a place on a spectrum. There is no 'have it' or not. Everyone is on a spectrum. At one end of it you would say you 'don't have it'. Past a point you notice it and do things differently. I say this as someone 'with it' and I see it in other people everywhere including family and friends.

Lol is my little afterthought at the end the only one of my points you can argue against? Cool.

No not really as anything causing distress shouldn’t be pressured onto an autistic person. You don’t force autistic children/ people into situations and sensory difficulties they find excruciating when there are perfectly good alternatives .

So your dc were part of the 72% then

Yes likely to be more than one gene which you have before you are born. You can’t give yourself autism. 🙄

People with autism are more likely to have been born prem. They are also more likely to have low muscle tone. Both of those make being able to be BF less likely.

Alongside the other 20,000 reasons previously published.

There has been masses of good research and the prevailing evidence is autism is genetic.Scientists have been trying to identify which gene for many years.

There's a massive spectrum of autism from people who are verbal, hold down successful jobs etc, to people who are totally uncommunicative, incontinent, stim constantly and require round the clock care. It's not going to be one gene.

Something can be "genetic" and it can still be valuable to understand the impact of external factors. You can have a genetic tendency to skin cancer, and wearing sunscreen & covering up may mean you never develop it.

I have a strong family history of heart disease but no heart issues - but it probably helps that I eat a very different diet, don't smoke, don't live in a heavily polluted environment, do plenty of exercise etc.

This is only ever going to be one correlation among many.

Its not impossible. While autistic tendencies appear to have genetic links, its also clear that those tendencies can develop in different ways. There's overlap between tendencies that are common among the NT population and those that form part of the spectrum of autism, the difference is the degree to which you are impaired. We don't know yet whether external or environmental factors may contribute to a person being more impaired. That could include their home life, their parenting, cultural factors as to what is/isn't considered "normal", their educational experience etc

@1vyBerry I don't know by what metric 500,000 is "tiny" and "a few medical records", I would say a strength of it is that it's so big. I also don't see the problem with it being retrospective given you can't do double blind randomised controlled studies on breastfeeding, or any aspect of parenting really.

To autism being genetic - yes the study doesn't deny at all that there is a genetic component. It's not 100% genetic though given that identical twins aren't always both ND or NT. And I refer you to where I quoted above that their aim was not to find ways to reduce neurodivergence.

The thing about finding it harder to breastfeed if you're autistic or ADHD is an irrelevant point because they studied sibling pairs. Kind of indicates you didn't think about this too hard, if you missed that aspect of the study.

Frankly though even if there was a study that showed that neurodivergent children aren't getting breastfed due to their neurodivergent mothers finding it difficult to do, wouldn't that be a useful finding in itself? Could suggest a need for targeted support?

It involved 570,000 babies approx.
That is not a tiny study.

Yes there’s a huge genetic influence with things like autism (but it’s vanishingly unlikely there’s going to be just one gene for autism). However something can be genetic but still influenced by the environment. Nature and nurture can both have an effect sometimes.

This!!!!!

Then it’s clear that given the shite that children and teens go on to consume a few weeks of BFing is going to have fuck all impact in the scheme of things.

It’s a tiny weak Israeli study looking at a few medical records retrospectively ignoring many issues others have listed below.

Two pretty crucial factors I’ll pick out.

Having autism and adhd makes BFing harder- a lot, lot harder. For somebody who is autistic it’s a completely hellish scenario. Also sitting still for periods of time can be incredibly hard for many with ADHD.

There has been masses of good research and the prevailing evidence is autism is genetic.Scientists have been trying to identify which gene for many years.

The article and the “study” are complete bullshit.

It's a study! Studies happen so that we can learn things! We don't leave certain areas as a research black hole just in case it makes some people feel bad.
I had two c sections, one of which was purely elective. If I see research that says that children born by c section have more problems with gut health or something, I don't think that research should be suppressed in case it hurts my feelings! In fact I read up on stuff like that when making my decision and decided the risks were worth it for me. And if there were any consequences of that decision I would own those.

In what way does it sound the same?

It’s not about blame. It’s about learning as much as we can so that people can make the best decision they can when it comes to feeding their child. Sometimes people have absolutely no option when it comes to the decision to FF or to have a caesarean etc. Sometimes they do have a decision to make. If they do have a choice it’s good to be able to make one that’s as balanced and informed as possible surely?

As for parents being made to feel guilty…for me that reminds me of my own situation with my allergic DC. It’s now known that feeding diluted peanut butter very early on to babies who are predisposed to peanut allergy can reduce their risk of developing the allergy by something like 80%. It’s not relevant to most babies but for affected families it is very good to know this.

I have a peanut allergic older child (young adult). This info was not in the public domain when she was a baby (quite the contrary in fact, late weaning of potential allergens was recommended then). Yes, I do feel guilty that I didn’t have this information and so didn’t try to protect my child. But do I think research shouldn’t have continued? That updated recommendations shouldn’t have been made to protect younger children in order to spare my feelings?
Of course not.
That would be ridiculous as well as unfair.

And the pp taking about snake oil merchants made me laugh. Who do you really think is most desrving of that title? The scientists doing this type of research or the huge formula milk industry. Come on.

Someone forgot to give my 3, breastfed, autistic kids the memo 😂

Well this is bollocks for a start. A child's brain continues to develop right through until the end of adolescence. Every experience builds new synapses and neurological connections which helps the brain develop. This is why babies and children need a lot of stimulation and new experiences, and children who lack it never catch up.

This reminds me of the doctor who claimed the MMR jab caused autism. That was total crap and this sounds the same.
Christ it's hard enough parenting a child with SEN without blaming mum for FF or having a c section. What exactly does this achieve? I mean apart from making parents feel like shit.

BF cannot 'cure' conditions that are present at birth.

No it's because it's yet ANOTHER stick to beat the mother with anything "goes wrong" with your child it's immediate "how did you eat during your pregnancy? did you take any medication? did you drink? did you smoke? how did you give birth? did you get baby blues? PND? your age weight during pregnancy family relationships even if you "bonded well" with your child did you co sleep? did you swaddle? Is dad involved?" That's just covering the early years it is fucking demeaning to go on and on how long I was in labour what medication I was given during labour birth weight apgar scores vaccines blah blah blah

It's exhausting and now apparently that means nothing if only I had breastfed

I suppose it makes a shorter assessment

Exactly. MNers seem to think medical journals will publish any old nonsense. That's not how it works. The peer review process is extensive; it's not like writing to the Letters page of the TV Times in 1998.

My main takeaway from this thread is that schools need to start teaching the differences between anecdotes and data. The number of people saying "that can't be true, I breastfed my child and they have autism" is unreal. Imagine if someone posted "It can't be true that 1 in 10 mothers get PND, I've had three children and never had it". Everyone would point out how flawed that logic is.

I think the reason research like this is met with eye rolling is because in every instance a small group of fairly vexatious breastfeeding advocates turn up to congratulate themselves under the guise of ‘just sharing the research’. However when the research is put in context (ie, a 30% higher risk actually means going from a 1% risk to a 1.3% risk) and that in the scheme of things it’s fairly negligible, suddenly they don’t like statistics as much and say you’re just being mean/jealous.

Plus, breastfeeding isn’t actually the biggest factor in gut health for babies. The biggest factor is whether or not they were born vaginally, and method of feeding is secondary to this. But that’s never discussed on here.