A recent study in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that women who were physically, emotionally, or sexually abused as children are more likely to have a child with autism.
Researchers analyzed medical records of 50,000 women and found that those who suffered the highest levels of abuse as children were 60% more likely to have autistic children than women who had not been exposed to abuse. For example, the study found 1.8% of children born to women reporting the highest amount of abuse had autism as compared to 0.7% of children born to women reporting no such abuse.
In a related Boston Globe article, Dr. Andrea Roberts, a research associate at Harvard School of Public Health, suggested that abuse may have lasting effects on a woman’s immune or stress response system, which may increase a child’s risk in utero. She also noted that the study does not prove that childhood abuse leads to more autism, but simply makes the association.
