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Maternal exposure to fine particulate air pollution may increase autism risk
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Findings from an ongoing study suggest that a mother’s exposure to particulate matter air pollution during pregnancy may be linked to the development of autism spectrum disorder in her offspring.
Researchers conducted a nested case-control study of 116,430 female nurse participants from the Nurses’ Health Study II, who were initially enrolled in 1989. They included female nurses with children born from 1990 to 2002 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (n=245) and without ASD (n=1,522). They measured particulate matter (PM) with diameters of ≤2.5 mcm and 2.5 to 10 mcm monthly using a spatiotemporal model linked to residential addresses, according to data.
Marc G. Weisskopf
Maternal exposure to PM2.5 was associated with an increased in the likelihood of a participant’s child developing ASD (adjusted OR=1.57; 95% CI, 1.22-2.03) in women with the same residential address before and after pregnancy, according to data.
In independent models, associations between ASD and PM2.5 exposure were weaker 9 months before or after pregnancy. However, the association with the 9 months of pregnancy were consistent (OR=1.63; 95% CI, 1.08-2.47), and the link between PM2.5 and ASD was more prominent during the third trimester (OR=1.42 per interquartile range increase in PM2.5; 95% CI, 1.09, 1.86) compared with other trimesters (ORs 1.06 and 1.00).
“Our data add additional important support to the hypothesis that maternal exposure to air pollution contributes to the risk of [ASD],” Marc G. Weisskopf, PhD, ScD, associate professor of environmental and occupational epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a press release. “The specificity of our findings for the pregnancy period, and third trimester in particular, rules out many other possible explanations for these findings.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures. This study was supported by a post-doctoral fellowship to Raanan Raz, given by the Environment and Health Fund, NIH grants, a US Department of Defense grant and a grant from the Autism Speaks Foundation.