Maternal hirsutism and autism spectrum disorders in offspring.
Maternal hirsutism adds a small autism risk, supporting a prenatal-androgen pathway.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Deserno et al. (2017) looked at Swedish birth records. They asked if moms with hirsutism had more kids later diagnosed with autism.
Hirsutism means extra body hair from higher male hormones. The team used medical codes to find these moms. They compared autism odds to moms without hirsutism.
What they found
Kids born to moms with hirsutism had slightly higher odds of an autism diagnosis. The increase was small but real in the large data set.
The result fits the idea that extra prenatal androgens may nudge neurodevelopment toward the autism spectrum.
How this fits with other research
Granillo et al. (2022) seems to disagree. They measured actual hormone levels in pregnant women and found no link to autism. The key difference is population: Lauren studied only babies who already had an older sibling with autism, while K studied everyone.
Aller et al. (2023) backs K up. They also saw higher autism traits when moms had both PCOS and high testosterone. Bouck et al. (2016) found a similar pattern using different maternal hormone markers.
Together these papers say the androgen signal is weak but keeps showing up across different ways of measuring it.
Why it matters
You cannot change prenatal hormones, but you can use this info when talking with families. A mom with PCOS or hirsutism may ask about autism risk. You can say the risk is only slightly higher and guide her to regular developmental checks. The finding also reminds us that autism starts long before birth, so early screening and early intervention stay our best tools.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →When you see PCOS or hirsutism on an intake form, reassure parents the risk bump is tiny and keep the focus on early milestones.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Because animal and human studies indicate that androgen exposure can influence neurodevelopment, it has been hypothesized that prenatal exposure to excess androgens may predispose to disorders with male-skewed ratio such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Therefore, maternal conditions characterized by hyperandrogenism such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) or hirsutism may be relevant to child ASD. We previously found in a large Swedish case-control study of 23,748 ASD cases and 208,796 matched controls that PCOS in mothers is associated with increased offspring risk of ASD. In the same sample, we have now examined whether maternal diagnoses of hirsutism were associated with ASD. In both unadjusted logistic regression models and models adjusted for a variety of covariates, hirsutism was associated with higher odds of ASD. The most adjusted odds ratios for associations with ASD for hirsutism diagnosis before birth and lifetime diagnosis of hirsutism were 1.64 (95% CI: 0.94, 2.83) and 1.26 (95% CI: 1.01, 1.57), respectively. The presence of an association of maternal hirsutism with child ASD is consistent with the hypothesis that androgens may be involved in the etiology of ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1544-1546. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1002/aur.1797