Age of Parents at Child ’s Birth May Raise Risk of Autism, ADHD, Other Conditions

How old mothers and fathers are when their children are born may affect their children ’s risk of developing several neuropsychiatric disorders, according to astudy published this week in theJournal of the American Academy of Child& Adolescent Psychiatry.Magdalena Janecka, Ph.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, N.Y., and colleagues analyzed data from the medical and psychiatric records of nearly 1.5 million people in Denmark who were born between 1980 and 2007. They looked at rates of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Tourette ’s syndrome/chronic tic disorder (TS/CT). They then looked at the age of the parents at the time people with these disorders were born. Parents who were younger than 27.5 years were considered “younger,” and parents older than 37.5 years were considered “older.”The researchers found that children born to older mothers had a 34% increased risk of developing ASD, and children born to older fathers had a 26% increased risk of developing ASD. Children born to older mothers had a 23% increased risk of developing OCD, whereas a father ’s age did not appear to significantly affect risk.“Many epidemiological studies have indicated that advancing parental age, and, in particular, advancing paternal age, contribute to offspring risk for ASD and other neuropsychiatric disorders,” Janecka and colleagues wrote. “Our study provides robust e...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: ADHD autism chronic tic disorder Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Magdalena Janecka OCD paternal age pediatric disorders Tourette ’s syndrome Source Type: research