High Levels of Oestrogens In the Womb Linked To Autism, Study Finds (sciencedaily.com) 185
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceDaily: Scientist have identified a link between exposure to high levels of oestrogen sex hormones in the womb and the likelihood of developing autism. The findings are published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. In 2015, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge and the State Serum Institute in Denmark measured the levels of four prenatal steroid hormones, including two known as androgens, in the amniotic fluid in the womb and discovered that they were higher in male fetuses who later developed autism. These androgens are produced in higher quantities in male than in female fetuses on average, so might also explain why autism occurs more often in boys. They are also known to masculinize parts of the brain, and to have effects on the number of connections between brain cells.
Today, the same scientists have built on their previous findings by testing the amniotic fluid samples from the same 98 individuals sampled from the Danish Biobank, which has collected amniotic samples from over 100,000 pregnancies, but this time looking at another set of prenatal sex steroid hormones called oestrogens. This is an important next step because some of the hormones previously studied are directly converted into oestrogens. All four oestrogens were significantly elevated, on average, in the 98 fetuses who later developed autism, compared to the 177 fetuses who did not. High levels of prenatal oestrogens were even more predictive of likelihood of autism than were high levels of prenatal androgens (such as testosterone). "This new finding supports the idea that increased prenatal sex steroid hormones are one of the potential causes for the condition," said Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge and author of the study. "Genetics is well established as another, and these hormones likely interact with genetic factors to affect the developing fetal brain."
The team cautioned that these findings cannot and should not be used to screen for autism.
Today, the same scientists have built on their previous findings by testing the amniotic fluid samples from the same 98 individuals sampled from the Danish Biobank, which has collected amniotic samples from over 100,000 pregnancies, but this time looking at another set of prenatal sex steroid hormones called oestrogens. This is an important next step because some of the hormones previously studied are directly converted into oestrogens. All four oestrogens were significantly elevated, on average, in the 98 fetuses who later developed autism, compared to the 177 fetuses who did not. High levels of prenatal oestrogens were even more predictive of likelihood of autism than were high levels of prenatal androgens (such as testosterone). "This new finding supports the idea that increased prenatal sex steroid hormones are one of the potential causes for the condition," said Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge and author of the study. "Genetics is well established as another, and these hormones likely interact with genetic factors to affect the developing fetal brain."
The team cautioned that these findings cannot and should not be used to screen for autism.
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/Oblg. What is "autis"? You spelt autism wrong. Oh snap -- are spelling nazi's austistic? =P :-)
(For those those don't get it /. limits the number of characters in the subject line.)
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Easy.
The government secretly makes vaccines increase oestrogen levels.
So if you don't want your children's children to have autism, don't vaccinate them.
Deranged conspiratorial thinking will always find a way to take the stupidity up by a couple of notches.
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Well a lot of them would be crying because their children have died from preventable illnesses.
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Ironic... because everything that follows this suggests that either you are trolling or else you hold the exact attitude which I don't approve of.
Taking a chance that you aren't trolling here, the answer is because being born neurologically atypical is categorically *not* the same thing as having an incurable disease for which there is no hope of having any life that might be worth living.
I do not subscribe to the view that abort
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The last sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
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The last sentence should be the headline.
Fear not - it will take more than this to shake the anti-vaxxer's opinion.
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The last sentence should be the headline.
Fear not - it will take more than this to shake the anti-vaxxer's opinion.
you fool. don't you understand? this proves estrogen is in the vaccines.
#IlluminatiCONFIRMED
What's really interesting is it proves the illuminati has a time machine to get those babies while they are still in the womb...
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Most of the world considers 3 out of those 4 to be abnormal.
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No. But your reading comprehension is. (Score:2)
You are WAAAAAY off the charts with how poorly you understood what you read.
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than your retared*
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Subtle answer: "I don't understand the question"
Hand-holding answer: "congratulations you found the joke"
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14-16 week amniocentesis (Score:3)
Read the paper, but if you're looking for data vis-a-vis oral ethinylestradiol, there's the timeframe. Actually isolating mother/child/placenta sources is currently further research.
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Contraceptives? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see a mention of contraceptives in either link but would prior use of contraceptives containing oestrogen be responsible for the elevated levels?
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Regular exposure to a chemical may have effects beyond "is the chemical still there"
Re:Contraceptives? Plastics? (Score:1)
How about exposure to plastics? A combination of contraceptives & plastics?
Estrogenic chemicals in plastics - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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Errmm...you do realize the pill is to prevent pregnancies, yes? And it is quite effective, so no there are not a lot of pill-addled kneebiters running around.
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The pill is also used for women who want to get pregnant. Using it for a few cycles to regulate out of whack hormones before trying to get pregnant is a common recommendation.
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As you age, you get hair in new places. Be wary of thinking you did something to "cause" it.
When I was in my early 20s, I only had like 4 chest hairs. Now I'm middle aged and it covers my chest, and goes down my stomach. First just a line of hair, but then my whole stomach.
It also starts coming out of your ears eventually.
So yes, it is a giant leap to think you did something special to cause that. You merely survived.
but why are they increased (Score:1)
The word "causes" should be banned or at least highly regulated from medical studies. This study just identifies an association.
First, if high levels of estrogen are a "cause", then why did it just cause a likelihood instead of a 100% certainty?
The fetus regulates the amniotic fluid content. If the hormone levels are high, the question should be what is wrong with the regulation mechanisms for it. A possibility would be a genetic defect that effects the regulation mechanism. It would then be possible that t
Re:but why are they increased (Score:4, Interesting)
The fetus regulates the amniotic fluid content. If the hormone levels are high, the question should be what is wrong with the regulation mechanisms for it. A possibility would be a genetic defect that effects the regulation mechanism.
My non-expert guess would be that the hormone levels are high as a result of external sources introducing them or inducing their over-production. Spike in autism coincides with modern pharmacology, it is possible we failed to fully understand side effects of some common treatments/supplements.
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Nope. It's the change in the diagnostic standards. (Score:2)
Spike in autism coincides with modern pharmacology
https://jamanetwork.com/journa... [jamanetwork.com]
Results For Danish children born during the study period, 33% (95% CI, 0%-70%) of the increase in reported ASD prevalence could be explained by the change in diagnostic criteria alone; 42% (95% CI, 14%-69%), by the inclusion of outpatient contacts alone; and 60% (95% CI, 33%-87%), by the change in diagnostic criteria and the inclusion of outpatient contacts.
It's like how suddenly with modern diagnostic methods cancer rates skyrocket due to early detection.
Then morons start popping out with ideas like "It's the TVs...", "It's the computers...", "It's the mobile phones...", "It's the vaccines...", "It's the doctors..." [voanews.com]
And that's all without taking in account how Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) [wikipedia.org] simply redefined autism and a bunch of other disorders.
Using DSM-IV, patients could be diagnosed with four separate disorders: autistic disorder, Asperger's disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, or the catch-all diagnosis of pervasive developmental dis-order not otherwise specified.
Researchers found that these separate diagnoses were not consistently applied across different clinics and treatment centers. Anyone diagnosed with one of the four pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) from DSM-IV should still meet the criteria for ASD in DSM-5 or another, more accurate DSM-5 diagnosis. While DSM does not outline recommended treatment and services for mental disorders, determining an accurate diagnosis is a first step for a clinician in defining a treatment plan for a patient.
The Neurodevelopmental Work Group, led by Susan Swedo, MD, senior investigator at the National Institute of Mental Health, recommended the DSM-5 criteria for ASD to be a better reflection of the state of knowledge about autism. The Work Group believes a single umbrella disorder will improve the diagnosis of ASD without limiting the sensitivity of the criteria, or substantially changing the number of children being diagnosed.
That's from Autism Spectrum Disorder
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You've actually got it backwards.
Flashback 50+ years, and it was all labeled under retardism and/or insanity.
We had insane asylums and loonie bins, and stuck the retarded kids in special non-schools, if they got let out of the house at all.
Now we've advanced medicine enough that we can start to parse these disorders quite a bit more. We separate issues into Intellectual Disabilities, Cognitive Disabilities, Autism, Emotional-Behavioral Disorders, Learning Disorders, etc.
We're not quite at the point of being
Re:but why are they increased (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it? Admittedly, I don't keep up with medical research all that much, but isn't it possible that the "spike in autism" is just a case of "more autism is being identified as such, as opposed to just calling the kid "retarded" and forgetting about him/her/it"?
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Does it? Admittedly, I don't keep up with medical research all that much, but isn't it possible that the "spike in autism" is just a case of "more autism is being identified as such, as opposed to just calling the kid "retarded" and forgetting about him/her/it"?
Not even close. The current levels of autism are much higher than just "we're getting better at diagnosing them" could ever account for. Of course there are other groups who only recently came into large numbers but since they are a protected class we can't call it a birth defect even though the evidence suggests it. I'm sure in the future they will wonder how people ever thought a small fringe becoming over 100 times more common could not be considered an obvious problem and warning sign.
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Not even close. The current levels of autism are much higher than just "we're getting better at diagnosing them" could ever account for.
You better get yourself a cite for that. Because in the he said, yes, but the other dude said no, you're not going to win anyone to your side without some backup.
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Not even close. The current levels of autism are much higher than just "we're getting better at diagnosing them" could ever account for.
You better get yourself a cite for that. Because in the he said, yes, but the other dude said no, you're not going to win anyone to your side without some backup.
Things are obviously changing. Think peanut allergies. If you're over 40 you don't have them ... pretty much period. Now peanuts are just this side of a weapon of mass destruction in a school. Use your brain, trust your own intelligence for a moment when it clearly doesn't add up. The number of kids on the spectrum now doesn't even begin to correlate with what has been seen in living memory.
Citations:
http://behaviorismandmentalhea... [behavioris...health.com]
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The word "causes" should be banned or at least highly regulated from medical studies. This study just identifies an association.
First, if high levels of estrogen are a "cause", then why did it just cause a likelihood instead of a 100% certainty?
Smoking causes cancer right? Yet plenty of people smoke and don't get lung cancer.
Driving recklessly causes accidents, but not all people who drive recklessly get in an accident.
Not all A leads to B have a 100% certainty.
You can play Russian Roulette and live to see another day.
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And, of course, if someone gets lung cancer, if they ever smoked, lived in a home where anybody ever smoked, or ever knew anybody who lived in a home where somebody saw a cigarette once, the cancer will be listed as 'smoking related'.
Kind of like if someone driving a car has a sudden heart attack and crashes into a restaurant that serves alcohol, the crash will show up as "alcohol related" in statistics. (I'm not kidding here!)
Read what he said (Score:3)
"This new finding supports the idea that increased prenatal sex steroid hormones are one of the potential causes for the condition," said Professor Simon Baron-Cohen
He didn't say it is a cause, just that it might be - or might not be.
Not too surprising (Score:3)
Given that links were previously found between androgen exposure and autism.
Androstenedione and testosterone, which are androgens, and estrodiol and estrone, which estrogens, are all nearly identical molecules. In fact the normal biosynthesis pathway for estrogens in the ovary starts with androstenedione.
All these steroid hormones are readily converted to each other in the body, which is why men who take testosterone hoping to look more manly end up growing breasts. If a fetus is exposed to abnormally high levels of androgen at some point in its development, there's a good possibility it will be exposed to high levels of estrogen at some other point.
Autism is Underdiagnosed in Females (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Autism is Underdiagnosed in Females (Score:5, Insightful)
My life experience is that while extreme geek men may seek extreme geek women, geeky men should also be open to women who can provide some additional complementary life skills, but is otherwise "geek compatible".
Re:Autism is Underdiagnosed in Females (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference is that autism is not a social handicap in the same way in women that it is in men. Mild autism in a woman is a personality quirk that is unremarkable, whereas in a man the same condition is unmistakable.
Where are the anti-vaxers? (Score:1)
Slashdot used to be exciting, now it is mostly full of ignoramuses with nothing to say, but say it anyway.
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The group composition has changed over time, but it is mostly due to attrition.
Ignoramuses are more likely to stick things out to the end. For various reasons.
Food additive hormones? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hormones are added to animal feed, and other chemical additives in food can affect hormone levels.
I wonder if these additives could account for the higher Estrogen* (Oestrogen) levels responsible for this.
* In know, it's a UK study, so Oestrogen is correct; but I'm from the US, and it just ain't right here ;)
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and other chemical additives in food can affect hormone levels.
That's why I make sure I buy food with only non-chemical additives.
Quark matter. Little known fact, it's good for the eyesight.
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There have been articles in the US for the past few decades about the hormones given to dairy cows causing girls in the US to hit puberty at younger ages, to develop a bit more than they normally would, etc.
It kind of makes you wonder if all those "Got Milk?" ads in the 80's and 90's pushed out by the dairy industry had something to do with the recent round of autistic children.
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Hormonal contraception has long lasting hormonal effects in the range of years and is much more likely to be the culprit, as it became more and more popular over the years for familiy planning.
Also the accumulation of active steroids in tissue, especially after cooking it, is a very unlikely event.
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Hormones are added to animal feed, and other chemical additives in food can affect hormone levels. I wonder if these additives could account for the higher Estrogen* (Oestrogen) levels responsible for this.
* In know, it's a UK study, so Oestrogen is correct; but I'm from the US, and it just ain't right here ;)
That would be a popular reason ... hipsters would get a little shiver of happiness.
Now, what if it's instead because millions of women started, er, simply taking oral estrogen in the 70s? Uh oh.
A thought (Score:1)
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Good to see the anti-vaxxer clutching at straws.
Other sources (Score:2)
It would be interesting to see a statistical comparison between incidence of autism and exposure to various pesticides, herbicides, and plasticisers that are known to mimic estrogen.
Soya contains phytoestrogen (Score:2)
We've seen a huge rise in its use as a filler in processed food as well as an active 'healthy' lifestyle choice.
Phytoestrogen acts like estrogen in the body.
Proof, no; but certainly worth of much more extensive study.
Why the elevated levels of the hormones? (Score:2)
That's really what's important no? You have a correlation (who's usefulness is quickly downplayed) and a promise to explore the correlation further. No mention of exploring something more meaningful ie, why are the hormone levels elevated (if in fact they are)?
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Perhaps it is your political bias that is clouding the study.
The debate if a Fetus is a Human life, we can debate until the clouds come home.
However a Fetus will normally have XX ( Female ) chromosomes or XY ( Male ) chromosomes. Now a chemical reaction my respond differently due to the genetic makeup of a Fetus, and if allowed to develop further could create longer term conditions.
Being that the Genes that will control gender is affected it would make sense to say the Mail and Female fetus responds differ
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Not directly. Genes control cellular activities that determine which cells develop into what types and that produce hormones. The hormones largely control the development of sexual characteristics, including brain development that can affect behaviour. Things other than genes can also affect hormone production, like temperature, transfer of hormones from mother to fetus, or exposure to chemicals that act on the same receptors as hormones do.
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This probably reflects high levels of testosterone, which have also been linked in utero to later same-sex orientation.
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Transgenderism didnâ(TM)t exist before 2012 in any meaningful way.
Christine Jorgensen (first American to undergo sex change surgery in 1951) proves your ignorance on the topic. LILO Elbe (transitioned in 1930) also reinforces that.
Social transition before hormones and surgery were available has been a fact for centuries.
Re:Stop trying to find causes of autism (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Stop trying to find causes of autism (Score:1)
When you send someone away to a facility to learn how to act like everyone else, that's not medicine, that's authoritarianism.
I've not seen an ASD "suffer" from anything but other people. Why doesn't everyone else change THEIR behavior instead of asking the aspie to change his.
Re: Stop trying to find causes of autism (Score:5, Insightful)
When you send someone away to a facility to learn how to act like everyone else, that's not medicine, that's authoritarianism.
I've not seen an ASD "suffer" from anything but other people. Why doesn't everyone else change THEIR behavior instead of asking the aspie to change his.
Society, in order to function, requires individuals to adhere to a large set of unwritten rules. If these rules are not followed, social cohesion is lost and cascading breakdown occurs. Regular people as part of natural development are able to internalize these rules, this process is called socialization. Some people require a more formal process, where these rules are explicitly taught.
To answer your question directly - if everyone else change their behavior, it is not given that society would continue functioning. While there isn't a direct way to describe all the societal interactions due to complexity, game theory [wikipedia.org] allows some limited modeling and the implications of these models are stark - it takes as little as 1% of population to change behavior (shift from cooperators to non-cooperators) to drastically alter the efficiency of the entire system.
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We let the ones who do not internalize socialization be the sociopaths running companies and large countries. They get there by breaking the rules thereby they get labeled as "mavericks" instead unfeeling inert wannabees...they always want to be something for which they are not qualified.
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Changing society to not mistreat disabled people who aren't doing anything wrong is something you have to do, even if it is inconvenient, even if you think it is a risk to society.
Absolutely, categorically not. Our moral obligation to accommodate doesn't go this far (risk to society).
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Parent of an Autistic 10 year old here. PDD-NOS, severely deficient in speaking/critical thinking.
Aspie's are not the only Autists. Root cause for Autism should be identified so that any that are human made can be resolved. Those that are natural, well, are natural but still should be considered.
Severely autistic people do have behavior issues and a heavy dependence on their guardians. You don't here about them on the Internet because they cannot interact effectively to do so.
It's not about Aspergers; it's
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I've not seen an ASD "suffer" from anything but other people.
Then you've not had any significant exposure to people on the full autism spectrum.
Hint: Your limited personal experiences should not be what you use to judge the entire scope of something. Being totally wrong but confident makes you look both ignorant and arrogant.
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Why doesn't everyone else change THEIR behavior instead of asking the aspie to change his.
Zuckerberg, and other developers of social media, have already done so in my opinion. We are now glued to our phones, avoiding real social contact, and are barely able to tolerate interacting with anybody, preferring typing at people instead of actual conversation.
Re:Stop trying to find causes of autism (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is true of many psychological conditions, there is an entire range. To make things more complex, no one is precisely this or that even in a range. It is more or less a smorgasbord, a little of this, a little of that. No surprise really, we're all a smorgasbord of influences.
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So yeah.. there probably should have been better, more distinct categories which would likely help.
That's like saying a rainbow needs more distinct categories of color.
A spectrum is a spectrum. Sure, you can say "that's orange" and "that's yellow", but there's a whole lot in between which is a mix of both. There are limited circumstances where an arbitrary slice in a rainbow to define colors makes a significant impact on people's lives. There are a lot of cases where doing this for ASD would very significantly impact people's lives. Saying that a kid doesn't qualify for a service because they're a hair o
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How about people who screen for Down Syndrome? Are they literal Nazis, too?
Why do you think it is justified to make others suffer from avoidable afflictions just so you can scream "Nazi!" and jerk off over how morally superior you imagine you are?
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No, since, as TFA states, exposure to high levels of male hormones has also been correlated with autism, this study confirms no such thing.
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