Experts Tease Out Maternal Infection's Link to Autism

Autism stems from a complex and, so far, baffling interaction of genetic and environmental factors. New research suggests one of those factors may be a pregnant woman's immune response to virus infection ― and perhaps to a flu shot.Since the 1950s, more than a dozen epidemiological studies have suggested that a pregnant woman's exposure to influenza directly increases her child's risk of developing schizophrenia.In 2002, mouse models offered a possible mechanism: that viral infection activates the mother's immune system, producing proteins that disrupt the fetal brain's normal development¹.Because of the similarities between schizophrenia and autism, some experts say prenatal infection may also be linked to autism."The bottom line is that environmental factors such as insults during pregnancy, in animals with a genetic background that's very clear-cut, can produce abnormalities in the gene array, the anatomy of the brain, the chemistry of the brain, and finally behavior," says University of Minnesota neuropsychiatrist S. Hossein Fatemi. "You may be able to explain some aspects of the genesis of autism by using such animal models."Read more at...SFARI, April 2008.