Androgen production is raised among women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) - a condition that affects the functioning of the ovaries. With this in mind, Kosidou and colleagues began to analyze whether or not a PCOS diagnosing throughout gestation might influence autism development among offspring.
Autism is a biological process disability characterised by social, communication and behavioural issues - currently affects around one in sixty eight kids within the U.S.A., increasing from one in a hundred and fifty children in 2000. While the exact causes of autism syndrome still remain unclear, past studies have prompted that a child's exposure to specific hormones, referred to as androgens, in their early childhood might influence development of the autistic condition.
Despite both men and women producing androgens - like testosterone and androstenedione - the hormones are typically brought up as 'male hormones,' because they play a key role in male traits and men produce them at much higher levels. These hormones also contribute to brain development.
Lead researcher Kyriaki Kosidou, of the Department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, et al. published their findings in the Molecular Psychiatry Journal.
To be able to reach their findings, the team used the Swedish health and population register database and collected huge load of information on all children aged 4-17 years who were born in the Kingdom of Sweden between the years 1984-2007. The researchers identified 24,000 youngsters with autism and compared them with 200,000 children without the condition.
The risk of autism was even higher for youngsters born to mothers who had PCO Syndrome and were obese; such women tend to have significantly high androgenic hormone levels, according to the team. While autism is far more common among boys than girls, the team says they identified no sex variations in autism risk among kids born to mothers with PCOS.
It is possible that autism and PCOS have shared genetic factors, according to the team, and also the association may additionally be a result of different metabolic issues that arise among women with PCOS. The researchers were unable to identify the precise reasons for his or her findings, however they speculate that the association between maternal PCOS and raised autism risk could also be driven by augmented androgenic hormone levels.
The researchers say additional studies are required to replicate their findings and to work out the underlying mechanisms.
Posted by : mediKa.bg