Prenatal factors and risk of autism in a Finnish national birth cohort

描述（由申请人提供）：在这项提案中，这是一个以前资助的奖项的更新，我们将调查怀孕期间的母亲环境因素和芬兰国家出生队列的后代中儿童自闭症的风险（芬兰自闭症产前研究，FiPS-A）。以前没有自闭症的研究曾经检查过母亲的生物标志物和围产期并发症和婴儿期孩子的头围生长速度的关系，提出产前因素。推定的风险因素包括环境毒素（包括多氯联苯和杀虫剂）和感染（流感和沙眼衣原体）。我们的目标是解决这些问题的一个大样本的自闭症病例和匹配的控制使用母亲的血清样本，在研究过程中，在芬兰几乎所有的怀孕和存储在怀孕。自闭症儿童和他们匹配的对照组是从包含芬兰几乎所有自闭症病例诊断的详细数据库中确定的。这些受试者与母体血清样本和其他登记数据（包括围产期并发症数据）相关。在这项研究中，自闭症病例和匹配的对照组的母亲血清样本将分析这些环境因素，并在妊娠期间的发生情况进行比较的情况下和控制。我们还将测试这些母亲在怀孕期间的环境因素是否与其他妊娠和分娩并发症的选择数量和异常的头围在婴儿期的速度。这项研究有可能导致更好地了解自闭症的潜在风险因素，以及导致这种疾病的收敛和发散的发展途径。由于这项研究中调查的风险因素在人群中相对常见，它们的发现可能会导致通过直接的公共措施预防孕妇自闭症病例，包括减少接触环境污染物，预防感染，如流感和妊娠期间的性传播疾病。这些研究还可能导致更好地理解产前侮辱改变自闭症出生后大脑发育的机制，并沿着其他措施，潜在地针对高风险婴儿进行干预。总之，拟议的工作建立在现有的国家出生队列的基础上，预计将对流行病学和临床/基础神经科学研究的新兴和潜在的变革领域产生相当大的影响，并导致改善目前的公共卫生政策建议怀孕期间的护理。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this proposal, which is a renewal of a previously funded award, we will investigate maternal environmental factors during pregnancy and risk of childhood autism in the offspring from a national birth cohort in Finland (the Finnish Prenatal Study of Autism, FiPS-A). No previous study of autism has ever examined the proposed prenatal factors by maternal biomarkers and their relationship to perinatal complications and growth velocity of the child's head circumference during infancy. The putative risk factors include environmental toxins (including PCBs and insecticides) and infections (influenza and Chlamydia trachomatis). We aim to address these questions in pregnancies of a large sample of autism cases and matched controls using maternal serum samples that were drawn and stored in nearly all pregnancies in Finland over the course of the study. The children with autism and their matched controls have been identified from detailed databases that contain diagnoses on nearly all cases of autism in Finland. These subjects have been linked to the maternal serum samples and to other registries including data on perinatal complications. In this study, the maternal serum samples of autism cases and of matched controls will be analyzed for these environmental factors, and their occurrence during pregnancy will be compared between the cases and controls. We shall also test whether these maternal environmental factors during pregnancy are related to a select number of other pregnancy and birth complications and to abnormalities in the velocity of head circumference during infancy. This research has the potential to result in a better understanding of potential risk factors for autism and of convergen, as well as divergent, developmental pathways that lead to the illness. Since the risk factors investigated in this study are relatively common in the population, their discovery may lead to prevention of cases of autism by straightforward public measures in pregnant women, including reduction of exposure to environmental contaminants, and prevention of infections, such as influenza and sexually transmitted diseases during pregnancy. These studies could also result in an improved understanding of the mechanisms by which prenatal insults alter postnatal brain development in autism and, along with other measures, potentially target infants at high risk for the disorder for intervention. In summary, the proposed work builds on an existing national birth cohort, and is anticipated to have considerable impact on an emerging and potentially transformative area of research epidemiology and clinical/basic neuroscience, as well as lead to improvements in current public health policy recommendations for care during pregnancy.