What if vitamin d deficiency is a cause of autism

It involves an analysis of dried blood spots from 3, newborns in Sweden, 1, of whom now have an autism diagnosis. The findings reinforce evidence of a link between vitamin D and autism risk.

A study of 4, children in the Netherlands, including 68 who have autism, revealed that those born to vitamin D-deficient women have more than twice the autism risk of controls. A link between vitamin D and autism is not surprising, because the nutrient is crucial for normal brain development. Newborns get vitamin D from their mothers, who get most of theirs from sunlight. Lee and his colleagues measured vitamin D levels in dried blood spots from children born in Stockholm between and The blood spots are routinely made within a few days of birth to screen for rare diseases.

They used established cutoffs in adults to classify the children as deficient, insufficient or sufficient in vitamin D. The analysis includes 1, children with autism and 1, controls. They found that children who have lower-than-average vitamin D levels have about 1. She will not say how many subjects the study includes, describe any preliminary results nor say when it will be complete.

Farah says Minneapolis researchers are now preparing to study the vitamin D levels of pregnant Somalis, other ethnic groups and Minnesotans of European stock. That data is particularly hard to come by because Vitamin D levels are not typically screened in pregnancy in the U. The other potential reasons for a climb in autism rates: There is increased attention to the condition in the U. Also, genes, studies have found, may play a role; a number of papers, including a study of five Nordic countries and a British study, found that the concordance rate among identical twins was as high as 90 percent.

Then there is the much-ballyhooed but ultimately disproved link to vaccines. Somali refugees, in particular, faced multiple stressors as they adjusted to their new lives in Sweden and Minnesota: They had fled civil war, lost a supportive tribal culture, and replaced a diet of fruit, fresh meat and grains with processed food. Perhaps, most importantly, they had traded family compounds and regular exposure to the equatorial sun for cloistered high-rise apartments.

But some of those potential cultural reasons could also point to vitamin D. Surrounded by strangers, the predominantly Muslim women covered themselves almost continuously when outdoors, says Gregory A. Plotnikoff, an internist, speaks Somali and has many Somali patients. Logging does not. Gut bacteria don't cause autism. Autistic kids' microbiome differences are due to picky eating.

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