Urinary Essential Elements of Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their Mothers.
Four urinary elements spotted ASD toddlers with 81 % accuracy, but the tool needs replication before clinic use.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Qureshi et al. (2020) compared urine samples from toddlers and preschoolers with autism and same-age typical kids. They measured 20 essential elements like sulfur, tin, and molybdenum in both the children and their mothers.
The team used simple lab tests and statistics to see which elements, alone or together, could tell the groups apart.
What they found
Four elements in the children's urine—sulfur, phosphorus, molybdenum, and tin—were different enough to sort ASD from typical kids with 81 % accuracy. That's about four correct guesses out of every five.
The mothers' urine showed no element differences at all, so the signal came only from the kids.
How this fits with other research
Zhao et al. (2018) saw a similar pattern using red-blood cells instead of urine, finding 11 elements that tracked with autism severity. The match across two body samples boosts confidence that element profiles really differ.
Panpan et al. (2025) extended the idea to serum, showing that both very low and very high zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium relate to ASD. Together these studies say the exact level, not just presence, matters.
Braam et al. (2018) looked at mothers' urine too, but for melatonin, and found low levels linked to autism risk. Fatir found no element differences in moms, so urine can carry different child versus parent signals.
Why it matters
Right now we diagnose autism with interviews and checklists. A quick urine test could one day give you an extra clue, especially in very young children where signs are still subtle. Keep watching this line of work—if later studies confirm the four-element signature, you might soon have an inexpensive, non-invasive screener to pair with your standard ADOS and parent reports.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Start a simple intake log that notes any unusual diet or supplement use—future element tests will need that context.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Even though the cause of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) remains unknown, the current understanding points towards complex interactions between environmental and genetic factors. One important environmental factor to consider is intake of toxic and essential elements, and their role in metabolism. Essential elements have received considerably less attention in the literature than the presence of toxins in urine. METHOD: The purpose of this investigation is to comprehensively assess the association between urinary element compositions of 28 mothers who had young children with ASD and 29 mothers who had young typically developing (TD) children, and in a subset of their children (21 with ASD and 26 TD). RESULTS: The results show that there are significant differences between the ASD and TD children cohorts' concentrations for four specific elements (sulfur, phosphorous, molybdenum, and tin). Utilizing multivariate statistical techniques (Fisher's discriminant analysis and support vector machines), it was possible to distinguish the ASD from the TD children groups with an 81% accuracy after cross-validation utilizing the four significantly different elements. However, among the mother cohorts assessed, there were no significant differences between those that had children with ASD and those with TD children. There was a significant correlation of levels of phosphorus and sulfur in the children with ASD (r = 0.63, p = 3.0E-3) and in the TD children (r = 0.47, p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Notable differences were observed between the elemental concentration in urine of children with ASD and their TD peers. Analyzing cellular pathways related to these elements are promising areas of future research.
Research in autism spectrum disorders, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s12011-009-8494-7