Assisted reproductive technology has no association with autism spectrum disorders: The Taiwan Birth Cohort Study.
Big Taiwan data show fertility treatments do not raise autism odds once family background is matched.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers looked at 20 095 babies born in Taiwan. They asked: do kids conceived with medical help get autism more often?
They matched each ART baby to a similar baby born the usual way. Then they checked who later got an autism diagnosis.
What they found
The groups had the same autism rate. Fancy conception did not raise risk once family factors were equal.
In plain words: the technology itself is not a danger signal.
How this fits with other research
Boudreau et al. (2015) saw the same thing three years earlier. After fixing for income and schooling, ART kids with autism looked no different in age of diagnosis or symptom strength.
Van Naarden Braun et al. (2008) checked multiple births—common after ART—and also found no autism link. The new Taiwan data widen that null to all ART babies, not just twins.
Sievers et al. (2020) looks like a clash at first. They say prematurity hikes autism odds, and ART babies are often early. But the Taiwan study kept gestational age in the balance. The takeaway: prematurity matters, ART itself does not.
Why it matters
When parents ask if fertility treatments caused their child’s autism, you can say the best data say no. Focus your energy on skill building, not guilt. Share the Taiwan numbers if they need proof.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The use of assisted reproduction technology has increased over the last two decades. Autism spectrum disorders and assisted reproduction technology share many risk factors. However, previous studies on the association between autism spectrum disorders and assisted reproduction technology have shown inconsistent results. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between assisted reproduction technology and autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in a national birth cohort database. Furthermore, the results from the assisted reproduction technology and autism spectrum disorder propensity score matching exact matched datasets were compared. For this study, the 6- and 66-month Taiwan Birth Cohort Study datasets were used (N = 20,095). In all, 744 families were propensity score matching exact matched and selected as the assisted reproduction technology sample (ratio of assisted reproduction technology to controls: 1:2) and 415 families as the autism spectrum disorder sample (ratio of autism spectrum disorder to controls: 1:4). Using a national birth cohort dataset, controlling for the confounding factors of assisted reproduction technology conception and autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, both assisted reproduction technology and autism spectrum disorder propensity score matching matched datasets showed the same results of no association between assisted reproduction technology and autism spectrum disorder. Further study on the detailed information regarding the processes and methods of assisted reproduction technology may provide us with more information on the association between assisted reproduction technology and autism spectrum disorder.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2018 · doi:10.1177/1362361317690492