To just remind you that autism is genetic?

[robotgun]

Research tells us that 60 to 90% of the risk for autism comes from your genome. Maternal and paternal age are also a significant factor. Also genetic variants exist that cause autism-like behaviours and go undiagnosed because we don't routinely run genetic tests on our children. We also don't routinely institutionalise children that are different to their peers.

There's 'more' autism because people are having babies at older ages. And we are better at spotting autism.

It isn't heavy metals, microplastics, or the MMR.

Sorry, but it seems like every day I open this app and there's a new post saying 'What's going on with all this autism around, eh?' and a slew of replies blaming environmental factors that have no science behind them whatsoever. Or, worse, blaming mothers for reproducing too late in life or eating tuna in pregnancy or taking prescribed meds.

If you see enough of these threads every day you could well start to believe the nonsense that people write, much like people that read the Daily Mail every day start to believe that Meghan Markle is the devil.

Autism has always been here. It's not better or worse than it used to be.

Even then, though, the risk of increased autism is relevant statistically on a population level rather than an on an individual level. it’s really important not to misunderstand this.
it makes beginners difference in individual cases.

As this 2020 roundup states.

“Even so, the absolute chance of having a child with autism is low even for the oldest parents. The researchers in the 2017 study calculated that about 1.5 percent of children born to parents in their 20s will have autism, compared with about 1.58 percent of children born to parents in their 40s.”

www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/link-parental-age-autism-explained/

This is the sort of BS I was hoping to avoid on this thread.

Think back to your own childhood - the bullied kids - autism in plain sight, the poor kid just didn't have any way to understand why no-one wanted to be friends.

Argh.

I still remember the humiliation of a primary school writing exercise: 'Describe your best friend.'

Shortly after that, my kindly class teacher wrote a note on my school report asking my parents if they were at all concerned that I had no friends, and adding 'Truly my only worry is Spaniel's entire absence of any social contact or interaction with schoolmates.'

I was seven. As I recall it, they just chuckled and said I'd always been like that.

@robotgun I work in the field and I think you are exactly right that the link between SSRIs in pregnancy and autism (which isn't even clear cut) is likely due to the fact that women who need to take SSRIs are more likely to be neurodiverse themselves

There is a genetic link between parental depression (particularly bipolar) and autism so it may not be the ssri exposure so much as the mothers genetic predisposition towards depression.

Interestingly I took an sari throughout my 3rd pregnancy - he's the only one of my children who's NOT autistic.

Yes, very low birthweight babies are 3-4 times as likely to be autistic. Prematurity is strongly associated with multiple pregnancies but can also arise from other causes such as smoking.

It's just a guess, and I wouldn't postulate it as a serious theory without seeing the research. But I took SSRIs, under medical supervision I reduced to very lowest therapeutic dose and was monitored during and after pregnancy. I have one NT kid and one ND kid, so who knows?

Autistic people are frequently misdiagnosed as having BPD @LoveSandbanks - and many, including me, have later in life had that initial diagnosis rescinded and been diagnosed as autistic.

There's quite a lot of data but the studies have not been done in a consistent way and the findings are very mixed. There's definitely no strong signal that SSRI use in pregnancy causes autism

I think this is actually a far more difficult topic than it seems. I'll try to break down my thoughts here.

Autism is not a diagnosis with a distinct test it is the name we give to a collection of observed behaviours. Two people can be diagnosed with autism with very little if any overlapping symptomology.

Some of the symptoms associated with autism can absolutely be caused by environmental factors. A good demonstration of this is children who survived the orphanages of communist Romania where even after adoption a high proportion of kids had long-term social difficulties and repetitive behaviours. I believe some of the spike in SEN kids in recent years may be directly attributable to parental withdrawal into smart phones.

Before anyone jumps on me for that I would add that this is not the case for many autistic kids/adults (myself included) and there is a strong genetic component for what you might think of as 'true autism' although, as autism is diagnosed through observed behaviours rather than say a blood test we cannot tell those with genetic autism apart from those with 'acquired autism'.

Something very important to keep in mind is that scientific and behavioural study and literature is likely to heavily bias away from those with 'acquired autism'. A huge amount of academic research is done with middle class kids, cause their parents are known to researchers, or those who are engaged enough with their kids to seek out specialist support groups where they are recruited from. Disengaged parents' children rarely make it into research studies so those who have acquired autism or rather autism-like-symptoms-indistinguishable-from-genetic-autism through parental disengagement rarely show up there biasing our understanding towards genetic causes.

A similar issue can be seen in ADHD and attachment disorders, they can look identical except if you give a kid with an attachment disorder a stimulant they'll become even more hyper-aroused. As far as I know (and it's been a couple of years since I left the research area) there isn't that kind of 'tell' for differentiating genetic vs acquired autism.

I think that changes in parenting account for some of the increase in autism diagnosis. Equally I also think we also probably have more kids born with genetic autism now cause since the rise of computers and tech in the 90's lots of people with autism have excelled in careers and workplaces where they have met other autistic people and gone on to have autistic babies.

Montelukast. An asthma drug.
So many people suffering severe psychiatric side effects.

I fear for DD, she has parents who are both old and both quite probably undiagnosed neurodivergent. Ah well, at least we understand each other 😂😳🤣

Well said OP. Just wanted to add my opinion to this. I don't think autism is created more often by parents having children later. I've seen so many parents having children in their teens and 20s (like me) who had babies young and their children are autistic. No surprise that one or both parents in each case is also autistic.

I'm positive it's purely genetics and not age or anything else food or environment related at all.

it's fantastic that more people of all generations are diagnosed now.

I think the NTs are freaking out that they will be the minority while us autistics take over the world!

NOT Sorry us autistics have the right to love to fuck and procreate like the rest of you.

If you don’t have a history of learning disability in your family, you’ll get ‘the children you deserve’. The crazy thing about ‘familial autism’ (as I call it) is that you can have super-amazing kids who seem perfectly ‘normal’ to you, but have ridiculous support needs the minute they leave your care.

Honestly, I have a wonderful, super-smart, very mature, extremely sensible DS7 who needs an EHCP (and a 1-to-1) to be in school. He’s no trouble whatsoever at home and I can take him literally anywhere (or, at least, anywhere I want to go myself with two kids).

Because he has an EHCP, I keep getting adverts from the council telling me I’m eligible for respite care. I always look at it, thinking, “well, I’m so glad they’re able to offer respite care to the parents of children with very high support needs. It must be so tough being a full-time carer for a child with that level of need”…

It's more complex than this. Autism is caused by a complicated combination of genetic and environmental factors. There are various environemtal factors that have been identified, for example the study on mice showing that the presence of a certain microbiome in the mother during pregnancy reduced the risk of autism-like behaviours in offspring, but we're not at the stage where we can medicate to actually try and control the outcomes.
Also, because autistic people are better integrated now than in the past, when they were often institutionalised, they are more likely to have children, and therefore there are more children being born who are autistic.

It’s genetic, and epigenetic to an extent.

Since DS1 got his Level 1 Autism/ADHD diagnoses, I’ve spotted it on all sides of my/DH’s families.

I used to think his mum had a personality disorder, but it’s ‘just’ maladaptive autism coping mechanisms 🤣 my mum has chronic ADHD, one of the worst cases I’ve ever encountered 🤣🤣

Yeah I guess that's the issue. So many confounders and never going to be able to conduct a study to show causation. The only things I've read showed association.

Predisposition to Autism is genetic.

Our genes interact with the environment in complex ways.

I think that our modern environment ‘favours’ autistic traits.

No, it isn’t.

The mouse studies are silly. Autism is diagnosed, by definition, from observing social behaviours. Humans are complex social animals. Mice are not. I have read some of the mouse studies - they’re very very silly. Stuff like ‘oh, the mice spend more time burying marbles than other mice, so they’re autistic’. If it was that easy to diagnose autism (in humans), there wouldn’t be a multi-stage multi-hour diagnostic process.

The autistic adults who were institutionalised are not the same autistic adults who are now having children. I’m in my mid-40s and there’s not a snowball’s chance in Hades I’d have been institutionalised. I’m told by my elderly mum that my DS7 would have been caned for bad behaviour and ‘naughtiness’ in her day, not institutionalised.

These are two wholly different groups of people. The only ‘increasing prevalence’ theories that make sense are ones about children surviving brain injury due to extreme prematurity and ‘assortative mating’ between geeks.

There's some animal studies which have suggested a higher risk. Changes in neurodevelopment on imaging and pain perception on fluoxetine exposed animal neonates. It makes sense in a way with serotonin being a neuromodulator

I often think about the parental age link. Surely autistic people take longer to mature emotionally, and therefore start relationships later, on the whole? It’s not causation.

The more is in inverted commas, which leads me to believe that @robotgun is indicating it's not more at all, only that it might seem that way.

what point is OP trying to make?

Last I checked nobody is ENTIRELY sure what causes Autism. And better yet, there is a lot of debate on the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria.

And it is often confused with other coditions.

And it is often diagnosed in some places because an autism diagnosis legally requires certain therapy/interventions/help at school.

So what's your point OP???

This

There's growing evidence of environmental factors according to some of the world's leading experts.

Professor Simon Baron Cohen has produced some amazing research on this topic.