Mother allergy/asthma ASD link

[SwirlingPurple]

Hi everyone,
I’m currently pregnant and suffering with allergies (dust, mainly) which is showing up in my bloods as high levels of Eosphonils, and physically presenting as eczema, occasional asthma and bunged up head etc.

I’ve come across a PubMed research document that “suggests” a link between maternal immune-mediated conditions (eczema is part of the list) and ASD/GDD. Does anyone here have any personal experience of this?

That's difficult - are you asking for mothers with ASD/GDD children to say whether they have asthma etc or for mothers with allergies to say whether there are signs of ASD/GDD in their children. I can understand why the paper might have been vague on the potential link!

Is there any chance you could post the paper link? Would like to look.

For what it is worth I have asthma and my child is in the process of being investigated for attention problems. However I am also an older mother and live in an area of high pollution. In order for any study to show any type of association between asthma etc and ASD you would need to rule out all of the other background influences, environmental influences and have a matched control population (both mothers and children) which is going to be either prohibitively expensive or impossible to source.

@gato21 You’re right, in one of them I read that it didn’t take into account family history, for example. Or the fact that whether the mother had “active” asthma during pregnancy or just a record of it in their life. Did you find your asthma was quite severe during your pregnancy? It is an interesting area to look into, however some of the research papers do contradict one another.

Someone posted this which was interesting;

https://go.skimresources.com/?id=470X756&isjs=1&jv=15.4.2-stackpath&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mumsnet.com%2Ftalk%2Fgeneral_health%2F4358805-Anyone-have-allergies-in-pregnancy-and-child-turned-out-okay%3Freply%3D132941782&url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs00787-023-02285-7%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DRegarding%2520maternal%2520allergy%2520and%2520autism%2C%255D%2520%28see%2520Table%25202%29.&xs=1&xtz=0&xuuid=e401c1cc304e038a690ab3f52204f008&xjsf=other_click__touchstart%20%5B%5D&cci=331d8a56c2102d5f9316aa1d5f0ee478

Thank you, I'll have a read through! I think that one is a meta analysis but the source articles might have more info.

My asthma was well controlled during pregnancy with a steriod inhaler (I was running as well which I think helped). I was in better shape then than I am now, which I am putting down to having very little sleep for a prolonged time and existing on carbs and coffee!

Amazing, let me know your thoughts on it! It’s a meaty piece of writing but I’ve found it fascinating reading about the “potential” links. You’re correct though, no thought on environmental or family history factors or even whereabouts they live. You’d think that info would have been fairly easy to obtain. What age is your DC now? And how old were you when you had them?

Amazing on the running by the way (aside from
the asthma fall out after). Mine has been fairly occasional but I did attempt a run myself a few weeks ago, in the bitter air, and my lungs were not happy 😂

i do know that research has shown that mothers with crohn's disease are more likely to have children with asd.
i lived in a multicultural community with a higher incidence of crohn's and the link to autism was equally higher than expected for the size of the population.