A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry refutes a 2014 research that suggested autism may be linked to C-section delivery.
The previous study made by researchers at the Irish Center for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research, in Cork, Ireland involved 2.7 million children who were born between the years 1982 to 2010, where they found children born via an elective C-section delivery were about 20 per cent more likely to develop autism.
But further studies made by the researchers showed that there is no direct link between autism and C-section delivery, and they concluded that births by C-section are likely to be caused by either genetic or environmental factors— factors that they said also increase the risk of a child developing autism spectrum disorder.
In an interview with Medscape Medical News, Cork University Maternity Hospital Consultant Obstetrician and Gynecologist Louise Kenny told:
“The overall risk of ASD (via C-section) is very small, and this most recent work suggests that most, if not all, the risk is not to do with the cesarean section at all, which is reassuring for parents.”
According to the research:
“Although the traditional cohort analysis revealed birth by C-section to be associated with ASD, it is not necessarily a cause because the association could be due to residual confounding… Therefore, because the association between birth by C-section and ASD did not persist in the sibling control analysis, we can conclude that there is no causal association.”
Source: Autism Not Associated With C-Section Delivery: Study