Older maternal age is associated with an increased change of having a child with autism.
Older paternal age is associated with an increased change of having a child with autism.
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental and behavioral disorders characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication and repetitive, sometimes obsessive, behaviors. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently estimated that as many as one in every 100 children has something in the ASD range.
Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) compared 68 age- and sex-matched, case-control pairs from their research in Jamaica, where UTHealth has been studying autism in collaboration with The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica and found that mothers who had children with autism were on average 6.5 years older than women who did not have a child with autism. The corresponding age difference for fathers was 5.9 years.
"This should put to rest discrepancies in previous studies showing that just maternal age or just paternal age are linked to having a child with autism," said Mohammad Hossein Rahbar, Ph.D., principal investigator and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at The University of Texas School of Public Health, part of UTHealth. "Our results revealed that the age of the father and the mother are jointly associated with autism in their children."
Rahbar said that in previous studies the statistical models used made it hard to assess both maternal and fraternal age as joint risk factors, a problem called multicollinearity. He said they were able to use more complex statistical models to avoid the problem.
The research was published last month in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Data for the study was collected at the UWI and utilized an existing database established by co-author Maureen Samms-Vaughan, M.D., Ph.D., professor of child health at UWI and principal investigator of the UWI subcontract.
