This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Induced, augmented labor increased autism risk in offspring
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Women whose labors are induced and/or augmented have an increased risk of bearing children with autism, most frequently if the baby is male, according to recent study finding published in JAMA Pediatrics.
“Inducing or augmenting labor has been previously suggested as a contributing factor to autism development,” Simon G. Gregory, PhD, associate professor of medicine and genetics at Duke Medicine, said in a press release. “However, these studies produced conflicting results and consisted of a relatively small number of subjects. Our study is by far the largest of its kind to look at the association between autism and induction or augmentation.”
Simon G. Gregory
The study included 625,042 live births linked to school records from the North Carolina Detailed Birth Record and Education Research databases.
The researchers found that, overall, approximately 1.3% of males and 0.4% of female children were diagnosed as having autism. Overall, males also showed increased odds of being diagnosed with autism compared with females (OR=3.04; 95% CI, 2.86-3.24). When stratifying based on birth induction or augmentation male children whose mothers were induced and augmented during delivery had 35% higher odds of being diagnosed with autism compared with a child whose mother was neither induced or augmented (OR=1.35; 95% CI, 1.1-1.66). Additionally, male children born to mothers who were induced only had 18% higher odds of autism diagnosis compared with births where the mother was neither induced or augmented. Males had 15% higher odds of an autism diagnosis if their mothers’ labor was augmented. Female children whose mothers’ labors were augmented had 18% higher odds of autism diagnosis compared to children whose mothers were neither induced not augmented.
“The findings of this study must be balanced with the fact that there are clear benefits associated with induction and augmentation of labor,” Chad A. Grotegut, MD, assistant professor of obstectrics/gynecology at Duke Medicine, said in the release. “Labor induction, especially for women with post-date pregnancies or medical conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, has remarkably decreased the chance of stillbirth.”
Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Simon G. Gregory, PhD, can be reached at simon.gregory@duke.edu.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts