Parents of autistic kids 'have autistic traits too'

Conclusion Overall, this study provides limited evidence of an association between elevated Social Responsiveness Scores (SRS) among parents and the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their children. As the authors note, the study has several strengths, including that it adjusted for several potential confounders, such as maternal history of depression and maternal and paternal age at birth, and used cases and controls drawn from a larger study (the Nurses' Health Study II). However, the researchers do note this wider study is not ethnically or racially diverse, so its findings may not be generalisable to groups outside of those studied. The wider study was also only carried out in nurses and this may also limit the generalisability of the study. However, despite these strengths, there are several limitations worth noting. Self-reporting ASD was predominantly determined via maternal report, so it is likely that some of the "cases" actually did not have the condition and instead had a milder condition, no condition or another condition altogether. The authors did attempt to account for this by validating a sub-group of cases using a diagnostic interview carried out by a trained health professional. However, this validation was only done for 50 "case" children. Incomplete paternal information The researchers say they also did not have complete information on the fathers of the children (for example, paternal history of depression was not accoun...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Neurology Mental health Source Type: news