“It may provide some reassurance to expectant parents, as our results show that infections during pregnancy do not pose as great a risk to the baby’s brain as previously thought,” says Håkan Karlsson, researcher in the Department of Neurology.
Previous research has shown an association between infections that the expectant mother has during pregnancy and the child’s increased risk of developing neurodevelopmental diseases such as autism or mental retardation later in life.
However, they could not understand whether the mother’s exposure to infections was really the cause or whether other factors were behind this relationship. Now, researchers from the Karolinska Institute have studied this issue in more detail. The aim of the study was to find out whether there is a causal relationship between infections a woman was exposed to during pregnancy and autism or mental retardation in a child.
“The link between infections in pregnant women and an increased risk of autism in their children does not appear to be causal. Our results suggest that the increased risk is more likely due to factors shared by family members, such as genetic variation or some aspect of the shared environment.”says Martin Brinj, a PhD student in the Karolinska Institute’s Department of Global Public Health and one of the study’s authors.
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Source: Ferra
