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，我们将调查孕期母体环境因素和芬兰全国出生队列的后代患儿童自闭症的风险(芬兰自闭症产前研究，FIPS-A)，这是先前资助的奖项的续期。以前没有关于自闭症的研究通过母体生物标志物来检验提出的产前因素，以及它们与围产期并发症和婴儿期儿童头围生长速度的关系。可能的危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)。我们的目标是在自闭症病例的大样本和匹配的对照组中解决这些问题，使用在研究过程中提取并存储在芬兰几乎所有怀孕中的母体血清样本。患有自闭症的儿童及其匹配的对照组已经从详细的数据库中识别出来，这些数据库包含了芬兰几乎所有自闭症病例的诊断。这些受试者与产妇血清样本和包括围产期并发症数据在内的其他登记资料有关联。在这项研究中，将分析自闭症患者和匹配对照组的母亲血清样本中的这些环境因素，并将其在怀孕期间发生在病例组和对照组之间进行比较。我们还将测试怀孕期间的这些母亲环境因素是否与选定数量的其他妊娠和分娩并发症有关，以及是否与婴儿时期头围速度异常有关。这项研究有可能导致更好地了解自闭症和Convergen的潜在风险因素，以及导致这种疾病的不同发育途径。由于这项研究中调查的危险因素在人群中相对常见，它们的发现可能导致通过直接的公共措施在孕妇中预防自闭症病例，包括减少对环境污染物的暴露，以及预防感染，如怀孕期间的流感和性传播疾病。这些研究还可能有助于更好地理解产前侮辱改变自闭症患者出生后大脑发育的机制，并与其他措施一起，潜在地针对患有这种疾病的高危婴儿进行干预。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/基础神经科学这一新兴和潜在的变革性研究领域产生相当大的影响，并导致改进目前关于孕期护理的公共卫生政策建议。

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.