Collaborative ECHO research from Kristen Lyall, ScD of Drexel University and Christine Ladd-Acosta, PhD of Johns Hopkins University found an association between childhood autism-related social behaviors and maternal obesity and gestational diabetes during pregnancy.
The researchers examined the link between child social development and a variety of maternal prenatal conditions—including obesity, gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia. Their research, titled “Cardiometabolic pregnancy complications in association with autism-related traits as measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale in ECHO,” is published in the American Journal of Epidemiology and aims to help better understand how a variety of risk factors during pregnancy relate to complex developmental outcomes, such as autism-related traits.
“Just like intelligence scores or height can be plotted on a curve representing everyone’s values ranging from low to high, social functioning and behaviors can also be measured and scored along a similar distribution,” said Dr. Lyall. “Investigating how exposures, health conditions, and risk factors relate across the full range of the outcome distribution may help us learn more about the nature of these relationships and their impact on the population.”
The study involved nearly 7,000 participants from 40 ECHO cohorts, including eight cohorts that had participants with increased likelihood of autism. The researchers collected data on maternal health conditions during pregnancy, maternal age, child autism-related social behaviors, and participant demographics.
Maternal obesity and gestational diabetes are common prenatal conditions, so understanding the impacts of these conditions on children development is an important public health issue. “This work shows that these conditions are not only linked with diagnoses of autism and other developmental conditions, but also subtler changes in related behavioral scores,” said Dr. Ladd-Acosta. “These results highlight the need for better prenatal care and more monitoring of women experiencing conditions like obesity during pregnancy.”
More work is needed in the future to reveal the specific mechanisms linking maternal prenatal health to childhood autism-related social development.