A small group of public health experts from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the University of Glasgow have reported a potential connection between prenatal nutrition and some occurrences of autism.
The team examined data from two sizable databases containing medical records on thousands of mothers and daughters in Norway and England for their study, which was published in JAMA Network Open.
While the precise origin of autism in utero is still unknown, previous research has indicated that environmental, genetic, and dietary variables may play a role in the development of autism in offspring. The research team focused more on how diet contributes to its development in this latest study.
The Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children are two sizable databases from which the researchers examined patient data. The data sets that the researchers examined were 1990 through 1992 and 2002 through 2008, and the latter contained data on children up to the age of eight. They examined information for almost 95,000 mother-daughter couples in total.
Upon doing an analysis, the researchers discovered a pattern: mothers who followed a “healthy diet” were 22% less likely to give birth to a child with autism than mothers who followed a less-than-healthy diet.
In their work, they defined a healthy diet as excluding foods high in fat, processed meats, soft drinks, and refined carbs and including frequent servings of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seafood, and whole grains.
In addition, they discovered that, independent of autism, children delivered to expectant women who consistently consumed a nutritious diet were 24% less likely to experience social and/or communication issues. Mother-daughter pairs showed a larger relationship in both situations than mother-son pairs, according to the study.
The research team notes that while they hypothesize that it may have something to do with how meals alter DNA or the immune system, the study does not explain why women who eat a healthy diet may have a lower chance of having an autistic kid. They add that their data was unable to demonstrate whether the influence of diet was causative or the result of other factors.