Children born to parents over the age of 30 are more likely to haveautism than those conceived by young parents according to the results of the study. This risk is greater if it is the mother who is over 30 years old.
Researchers from Drexel University (Philadelphia) and the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) carried out this scientific study on a cohort of 417,303 children with and without intellectual disabilities. The researchers carried out a “broad” screening for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and recorded the parents’ age at the date of conception.
The objectives of this study were to analyze the link between parental age and the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with and without intellectual disability (ID).
From the age of 30, the risk of having a child with ASD increases
Parental age increases the risk of ASD, especially those with ID.
Recently, a study by the University of Indiana (northern United States) and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm highlighted the negative effects of the age of the father on the risks of ASD and revealed, for example, that “a child whose father is 45 years old at birth is 3.5 times more likely to suffer from autism and 13 times more likely to have attention disorders than a child whose father is 24 years old At his birth “.
“Our study confirms that, in men, the risk of conceiving a child with ASDincreases linearly with age throughout life. But we also found that the increase in ASD risk with parental age is greater for (older) mothers than for fathers,” says Brian K. Lee, assistant professor at Drexel University and author principal of the study. The risk of having a child with ASD does not increase linearly with the age of the mother but exists from the age of 30.
The National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) estimates that 100,000 young people under the age of 20 suffer from pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) in France and thatautism infant would concern approximately 30,000 of them.
