Older Fathers = Autistic Children?

Filed in archive Studies on September 9, 2006

More likely...that's according to an article in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry (one of the JAMA/Archives journals): children of men aged 40 and above have a significantly increased risk of having autism spectrum disorders compared with those whose fathers are younger than 30.

Collectively refer to as autism spectrum disorders, autism and related conditions have become increasingly common, affecting 50 in every 10,000 children as compared with five in 10,000 two decades ago.

Autism, characterized by social and language abnormalities and repetitive patterns of behavior, may have increased in actual incidence and/or partially due to the higher levels of awareness these days and the improved diagnostic processes.

In previous studies, older parental age been associated to abnormalities in the children's brain development but few studies have effectively examined the effect of mothers' and especially fathers' ages on autism.

A research team headed by Abraham Reichenberg, Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, evaluated this association in children born during the 1980s in Israel and found that older age among fathers was associated with increased risk of autism; an association that persisted even after controlling for year of birth, socioeconomic status and the mother's age.

The authors of the study concluded that the above study provides the first convincing evidence that advanced paternal age is a risk factor for autism spectrum disorder, even if further work is necessary to confirm such findings.

Find more details at King's College London News.