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Parents of a child with ASD less likely to have more children

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder are less likely to have more children compared with families without an affected child, according to recent study findings published in JAMA Psychiatry.

“While it has been postulated that parents who have a child with ASD may be reluctant to have more children, this is the first time that anyone has analyzed the question with hard numbers,” Neil Risch, PhD, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and director of the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a press release.

Risch and colleagues evaluated 19,710 families with a child with ASD and 36,215 control families without a child with ASD to determine the rates of childbearing after having an affected child.

“This study is the first to provide convincing statistical evidence that reproductive stoppage exists and should be taken into account when calculating the risks for having another child with ASD,” Risch said. “These findings have important implications for genetic counseling of affected families.”

Compared with control families, families whose first child had ASD were one-third less likely to have a second child. Families who had a child with ASD, who was not the first born, were also less likely to have more children.

There was an 8.7% recurrence risk for full siblings and 3.2% recurrence risk for maternal half-siblings after the birth of any sibling with ASD. This was increased when the first child was born with ASD to 10.1% for full siblings and 4.8% for maternal half-siblings.

“Unfortunately, we still don’t know what causes autism, or which specific conditions make it more likely,” study researcher Lisa A. Croen, PhD, of the division of research at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., said in the release. “We are hoping that further research will enable us to identify both effective treatment strategies and, ultimately, modifiable causes of the disorder, so parents won’t have to curtail their families for fear of having another affected child.”

Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the Institute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco and the National Cancer Institute.