Thyroid problems at birth might be associated with an increased risk of autism. Can anyone say endocrine disrupting chemicals?
For more details about what can disrupt the endocrine system and what the results might be, I would suggest reading this statement on endocrine disrupting chemicals from The Endrocine Society.
Are thyroid hormone concentrations at birth associated with subsequent autism diagnosis?
Autism Res. 2011 Aug 31.
Hoshiko S, Grether JK, Windham GC, Smith D, Fessel K.
Environmental Health Investigations Branch, California Department of Public Health, Richmond, California. sumi.hoshiko@cdph.ca.gov.
Thyroid hormones substantially influence central nervous system development during gestation. We hypothesized that perturbations of early thyroid profiles may contribute to the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Thyroid pathways could provide a mechanism by which environmental factors that affect the thyroid system may impact autism occurrence or phenotypic expression. We investigated whether thyroxine (T4) levels at birth are associated with subsequent ASD, using two existing California study groups in multivariate analysis. One study group included children born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1994, with cases identified through the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) and/or the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Northern California (244 cases, 266 controls); the other included children born in California in 1995, with cases identified through DDS (310 cases, 518 controls). Matched controls were selected from birth certificate records. This exploratory analysis suggested that infants with very low T4 (<3rd percentile) may have higher ASD risk, although results reached statistical significance only for the 1995 study group (1995: OR = 2.74 (95% CI 1.30-5.75; 1994: OR = 1.71 (95% CI 0.57-5.19). A variety of alternate analyses were conducted with available data, without further resolution of the difference between the two study groups. The results of our study indicate that further studies are warranted to investigate whether thyroid hormone perturbations play a role in the development of ASD by evaluating additional potential confounders and genotype or phenotype in larger studies.
PMID: 21882364
DOI: 10.1002/aur.219.
My son, in his teens, developed hypothyroidism, so I am keen to seeing it online. He also has learning differences, so when LDonline had a tweet that led to this webpage, I paid attention.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ldanatl.org/hcp.asp
It says, "Iodine deficiency is the most common preventable cause of thyroid disease and developmental disabilities in the world." That is a major statement!
Hypothyroidism at birth is serious, but can be overcome if treated early. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002174/
Surely they do testing for an underactive/overactive thyroid at birth, don't they?