Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Study Seeks Causes of Autism Prior to Birth

BALTIMORE, Md. -- When Ginny Russo goes into labor sometime at the end of May, her first call will be to her doctor. Her second: to the researchers who want to collect her baby's placenta, umbilical cord blood and first dirty diaper.
They're part of the same crew that, during the course of her pregnancy, came to Russo's Carroll County, Md., home to vacuum (and take what got sucked up with them), collect dust samples and poke their noses inside her cabinets and closets, making note of cleaning supplies, hair products and other chemicals on hand. They also took blood and urine samples and had Russo check in regularly to report any medicines she was taking, what she was eating, whether she was wearing sunscreen.
Researchers in a national study are interested in all of this because Russo already has a child, one with autism. That gives her unborn child much greater odds of also having an autism spectrum disorder. (The likelihood is less than 1 percent for the general population, but 20 percent for babies with an autistic sibling, according to Rebecca Landa, director of the Kennedy Krieger Institute's Center for Autism and Related Disorders and a co-investigator for the study in Maryland.)

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