Autism Linked to Maternal Exposure to DDT, Study Finds

Though the organic pollutants DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) were banned in the U.S. and many other countries more than 30 years ago, these toxic compounds can persist in the environment for decades. According to astudy published today inAJP in Advance, maternal exposure to DDT is associated with an increased risk of autism in children, particularly autism with significant intellectual disability. There was no association between maternal exposure to PCBs and autism.While several studies have established a connection between environmental pollutants and autism, “few studies have examined an association between prenatal exposure to toxins and autism, and among these, most have been based on ecologically, rather than serologically, documented exposures,” Alan Brown, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University Medical Center and colleagues wrote. The researchers used blood samples from mothers to assess DDT and PCB exposure, providing the first biomarker-based evidence for this connection.The researchers obtained their data from the Finnish Maternity Cohort, which has archived serum samples from more than 1 million pregnant women since 1983. Using national health registries, they next identified 778 diagnoses of autism among children born to these mothers between 1987 and 2005. These 778 mother-child pairs were matched 1:1 with pairs that included a child without autism, and blood samples from all 1,556 mothers were analyzed for PCBs and ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: autism DDT intellectual disability maternal risk factors PCB pesticide exposure Source Type: research