Mother's Age is Real Factor in Autism Risk, Study Says

Older women are much more likely to have a child with autism than are older men, but the exact risk varies with the sociological factors in any given year, according to a controversial report published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.The prevailing wisdom, based on several high-profile studies, is the opposite: that men older than 40 have up to six times the risk of their younger counterparts of fathering a child with autism, whereas older women have little — if any — increase in that risk. The authors of the new report say that those conclusions are the result of a statistical fluke that exaggerates the real risk for older men.In their study, they analyzed nearly 5 million birth records of children in California, and calculated that the risk of having an autistic child for women older than 40 varied between 1.27 in 1995 and 1.84 in 1993, compared with the risk for women younger than 30; the corresponding risk for men older than 40 ranged from 1.29 in 1992 to 1.71 in 1995.Read more at...SFARI, September 2009.