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Older parents more likely to have an autistic child: study

Reuters Health News, 2012

Wed, Feb 1 2012 Tue, Jan 31 2012 Mon, Jan 30 2012 Mon, Jan 30 2012 Tue, Jan 24 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children born to a parent over age 35 are at greater risk for developing an autism spectrum disorder -- but the risk is the same whether just one or both parents are older, according to a new study of Danish families.
That is having an older mom and an older dad doesn't increase risk more than having one or the other," said Marissa King, a professor at the Yale School of Management, who was not involved in the study.
"The data clearly demonstrate that older parents are more likely to have kids with autism, but it doesn't establish why that is the case," King told Reuters Health in an email.
The findings throw a monkey wrench into the idea that perhaps older sperm or eggs have more mutations that could increase the odds of having a child develop autism.
Erik Thorlund Parner at the University of Aarhus School of Public Health in Denmark said that if genetic problems arising from older sperm or eggs explain the results, then having both an older sperm and an older egg together should total up to an even higher risk of autism for the child.
Yet Parner, who led the study, and his colleagues did not find a higher risk of autism among kids with two older parents compared with just one.
The researchers collected information on more than 9,500 children in Denmark who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
These disorders range from mild Asperger's Syndrome to severe mental retardation and social disability.
In the new study, kids born to fathers in their late thirties had up to a 28 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder than kids born to dads under age 35.
For kids born to dads over age 40, the risk for developing an autism spectrum disorder was 37 to 55 percent greater than for kids of dads under age 35, and the mother's age didn't seem to matter.