Older men and women are more likely than young ones to have a child with autism, according to multiple studies published in the past decade. Especiall

Spectrum: Autism Research News

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2021-06-10 08:00:08

Older men and women are more likely than young ones to have a child with autism, according to multiple studies published in the past decade. Especially when it comes to fathers, this parental-age effect is one of the most consistent findings in the epidemiology of autism.

The link between a mother’s age and autism is more complex: Women seem to be at increased odds of having a child with autism both when they are much older and much younger than average, according to some studies. Nailing down why either parent’s age influences autism risk has proved difficult, however.

How do we know that older men have elevated odds of fathering a child with autism? Epidemiologists have gathered data on large numbers of families and calculated how often men of different ages have a child with autism. The first rigorous study of this type, published in 2006, drew on medical records of 132,000 Israeli adolescents. It showed that men in their 30s are 1.6 times as likely to have a child with autism as men under 30; men in their 40s have a sixfold increase.

Since then, scientists have conducted similar analyses of data on children born in California, Denmark and Sweden, as well as of an international dataset on 5.7 million children. Nearly all of this research has shown an increased prevalence of autism among the children of older fathers.

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