According to a new study, children with autism and born either prematurely or several weeks late could experience more severe symptoms than children with the complication but born on time. The researchers revealed that children with autism who were born either prematurely or several weeks late may be more likely to inflict self-injury.
“With preterm and post-term babies, there is something underlying that is altering the genetic expression of autism,” Tammy Movsas, a postdoctoral epidemiology fellow at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, said in a university news release.
“The outside environment in which a preterm baby continues to mature is very different than the environment that the baby would have experienced in utero,” she said. “This change in environment may be part of the reason why there is a difference in autistic severity in this set of infants.” “Normal gestation age of birth seems to mitigate the severity of autism spectrum disorder symptoms, and the types of autistic traits tend to be different depending on age at birth,” Movsas said.
The study was published online April 3 in the Journal of Autism and Development Disorders.
Popularity: 1% [?]
