|
 Researchers examined data on more than 1.3 million births in Sweden
and found about 3.5% of babies born after induction were diagnosed
with autism by age 20, compared with 2.5% of other infants. This
translates into a roughly 19% greater risk of autism with induced
labor, which is statistically significant.
But when researchers took a closer look just at sibling pairs with
one baby that arrived after induction and another that didn’t, they
no longer found any link between induced labor and autism risk.
The results from nearly 700,000 siblings suggest that any elevated
autism risk associated with labor induction is actually due to other
factors such as genetics or medical issues experienced by individual
women, said lead study author Dr. Anna Sara Oberg of Harvard
University in Boston.
“The association observed between unrelated individuals may be a
result of confounding factors, and not a causal effect of labor
induction on the risk of autism spectrum disorder,” Oberg said by
email.
Oberg and colleagues reviewed data on all live births in Sweden from
1992 to 2015. Overall, about 11% of these deliveries were induced,
the researchers reported online July 25 in JAMA Pediatrics.
Labor induction was more common when mothers were older, obese,
hypertensive, or diabetic.
The mother’s country of origin, education level and smoking status
early in pregnancy didn’t appear to impact whether they would have
an induced labor.
One limitation of the study is that it didn’t examine various types
of labor induction, which can include a variety of medications and
procedures to help labor begin and progress, the authors note.
The findings from the current study also run counter to a large 2013
study of U.S. babies that did link labor induction to a greater risk
of autism, Oberg noted.
More research is needed to explore how different types of induction
or various reasons for induced labor may influence the odds of
babies developing autism, Oberg said.
[to top of second column] |
Still, findings from the current study should be reassuring for
parents, said Dr. Bryan King, a researcher at Seattle Children’s
Hospital and the University of Washington who wasn’t involved in the
study.
“These investigators were able to take advantage of a very large
population database to look within families and compare the risk for
siblings who were induced versus those who weren’t, thus better
controlling for other genetic and environmental risks,” King said by
email.
It’s possible that any greater risk of autism seen with induction is
actually due to the medical reasons induction was needed, and not to
the medication used to help labor progress, said Dr. Daniel Coury, a
researcher at Ohio State University in Columbus and Nationwide
Children’s Hospital who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.
“The odds are very positive that the product of an IVF pregnancy or
an induced labor is going to be a healthy child,” Coury said by
email. “The great majority of children with autism have not been the
product of an induced labor; we still don’t know all the causes of
autism.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2aexfMk and http://bit.ly/2ahdOjw
JAMA Pediatrics 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
