Low maternal melatonin level increases autism spectrum disorder risk in children.
Low melatonin in mothers is tied to autism risk, but the same hormone can later rescue sleep in affected children.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Braam et al. (2018) compared urine from mothers of children with autism to mothers of typically developing kids. They measured a melatonin breakdown product called 6-sulfatoxymelatonin.
The team wanted to know if moms who later had a child with autism had lower melatonin while pregnant or right after birth.
What they found
Mothers of children with autism had clearly lower melatonin metabolite levels. The difference showed up in both pregnancy and postpartum samples.
Lower maternal melatonin was linked to higher autism risk in the child.
How this fits with other research
Wright et al. (2011) gave autistic children nightly melatonin pills and gained almost an hour of extra sleep. That success story sits after the Wiebe warning: moms may run low on melatonin before birth, yet kids can still benefit from it later.
Amore et al. (2011) found that autistic children who make more of their own melatonin at night enjoy deeper sleep and less daytime tiredness. Together the three papers form a timeline: low maternal supply → autism risk → low child output → treatable with safe pills.
Guisso et al. (2018) lists many other prenatal risks (infections, postpartum feeding trouble, family history). Melatonin joins that list but does not replace it; clinicians still need the full picture.
Why it matters
If you work with families planning pregnancy or receiving an early autism diagnosis, ask about sleep. Moms who report lifelong insomnia or shift-work may share the low-melatonin profile. While you cannot prescribe prenatal melatonin yet, you can flag them for obstetric follow-up and, after birth, quickly trial child melatonin if sleep problems arise. The pill costs pennies, has mild side effects, and may buy the family an extra hour of sleep even when behavior plans alone fail.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: It is assumed that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is caused by a combination of de novo inherited variation and common variation as well as environmental factors. It often co-occurs with intellectual disability (ID). Almost eight hundred potential causative genetic variations have been found in ASD patients. However, not one of them is responsible for more than 1% of ASD cases. Low melatonin levels are a frequent finding in ASD patients. Melatonin levels are negatively correlated with severity of autistic impairments, it is important for normal neurodevelopment and is highly effective in protecting DNA from oxidative damage. Melatonin deficiency could be a major factor, and well a common heritable variation, that increases the susceptibility to environmental risk factors for ASD. ASD is already present at birth. As the fetus does not produce melatonin, low maternal melatonin levels may be involved. METHODS: We measured 6-sulfatoxymelatonin in urine of 60 mothers of a child with ASD and controls. RESULTS: 6-sulfatoxymelatonin levels were significantly lower in mothers with an ASD child than in controls (p = 0.012). CONCLUSIONS: Low parental melatonin levels could be one of the contributors to ASD and possibly ID etiology. Our findings need to be duplicated on a larger scale. If our hypothesis is correct, this could lead to policies to detect future parents who are at risk and to treatment strategies to ASD and intellectual disability risk.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2018 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2018.02.017