
Vitamin D deficiency in pregnancy is linked to autism traits in the child - clumsysmurf
http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/news/qbi-confirms-vitamin-d-link-autism-traits
======
pgcudahy
Looks like it's at stage two in the science hype cycle.
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174)
I'll pay attention when a randomized control study shows that supplementing
vitamin D lowers rates of autism.

~~~
nabla9
Be aware that this study is about vitamin D deficiency. It's not start for
some crazy health trend. You can go and check you vitamin D levels and if you
don't get enough, use supplements to correct the situation.

~~~
exhilaration
Can any HNers recommend a cheap and accurate vitamin D test I can do at home?
I asked my doctor for a vitamin D test at my last checkup and he warned me
that my insurance probably wouldn't pay for it since "many people are asking
for one these days without any symptoms of deficiency". Since I had no idea
what the lab might end up charging me for it (in the U.S.) I decided against
getting the test.

~~~
jtolj
Hope this isn't considered spammy by anyone, I certainly have no incentive
(financial or otherwise) to recommend it, but there's a company called "Life
Extension" that allows you to order blood tests online.

They email you paperwork, you take that to a local lab and then get your
results online. It looks like Vitamin D is $47.

I used it for a while when I was suffering from a health issue that required
regular blood tests, since it ended up being cheaper than a doctors visit +
co-insurance for the lab fees.

The biggest downside is there's nobody to explain the results to you, although
the report they provide does show if you are outside the normal range of
whatever they are testing.

[http://www.lifeextension.com/vitamins-supplements/blood-
test...](http://www.lifeextension.com/vitamins-supplements/blood-tests/blood-
tests)

~~~
nwah1
I second this. I use Life Extension. However, I've been paying out of pocket.
I'm interested if there's a way to get it covered at all.

By the way, this is really just using LabCorp, and you can order similar tests
directly via LabCorp. Might be worth price shopping between them, and checking
out their different test options.

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the_wheel
It'd be interesting to see if there's a seasonal correlation here - since most
of our vitamin D comes from the sun, expectant moms are probably more
deficient in the winter. Wonder if third trimester during those months, when
there's rapid neurogenesis, leads to an even higher incidence of these traits.

~~~
nabla9
There is correlation at least in Northern countries in Europe.

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leekyle
Somalian children living in Minnesota have a higher rate of autism compared to
whites and non whites. They have also noticed this in Stockhom as they also
have a lot of Somalian immigrants. Researches have found "The increased
prevalence remained and was now between four and five times higher in children
of Somali background. A clinical observation was that more than 80%, in
addition to autism and learning disability, had a profound hyperactivity."
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2010....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2010.03812.x/full)
People have hypothesized vitamin D could be contributing to this as having
darker pigmentation makes it harder to absorb sunlight.

~~~
oh_sigh
Do they have higher rates of autism than Somalis in Somalia?

~~~
gohrt
likely hard to get good data on that.

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DoodleBuggy
Wouldn't we be seeing "hot spots" in darker northern climates and trouble-free
zones in sunnier southern locations?

The most compelling linkages I have seen are to certain pesticide / herbicide
exposures and pollution exposures.

~~~
cowardlydragon
In Minnesota, the Somali immigrants allegedly never saw autism until they came
here, and they get a lot of it now.

They call it the "Minnesota Disease".

I also once read that Cable television penetration rates were correlated with
autism as well...

~~~
klodolph
Well, to be perfectly fair, we never "saw" it before 1943, either. I'm not
trying to be flippant, our society is set up in a way to diagnose cases of
autism, and it is reasonable to suspect that the increased rates of diagnosis
are not all caused by increased rates of the condition.

~~~
hbk1966
I read somewhere a while back that said that the reason for rising autism
rates in the 90's/00's was because we broadened the definition of autism.

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Nomentatus
"New research states that 330,000 lives could be saved by optimizing vitamin D
levels through sun exposure.[1] That compares to 450,000 deaths linked to
tobacco. This is to be expected, since a Swedish study demonstrated that over
a 20- year period, women who avoided the sun were TWICE AS LIKELY TO DIE OF
ANY CAUSE, as women who were sun-seekers,and the researchers stated the
following: “Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar
to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun
exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking.”

Citing: Lindqvist PG, Epstein E, Landin-Olsson M, Ingvar C, Nielsen K,
Stenbeck M, Olsson H. Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for all-cause
mortality: results from the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort. J Intern Med.
2014 Jul;276(1):77-86

~~~
Nomentatus
So why aren't we replacing window glass (especially in hospitals!) with UV
transmitting OP4 plastics?

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aussieguy123
Correlation is not causation.

Autism is genetic and an autistic parent is more likely to stay inside most of
the time.

Staying inside most of the time can lead to vitamin D deficiency.

If one biological parent is autistic, there is a 50% chance their child will
also be autistic.

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wch
From my quick skim of the article, I think this is the key part:

> These results imply that, after correcting for confounding variables (see
> notes under Table 3), those who were deficient at time of birth had on
> average 0.06 point higher gender-weighted SRS score, which corresponds to an
> increase of approximately one fourth of the s.d. (s.d. of the SRS in the
> total sample=0.23). When treating SRS as a dichotomous outcome, that is,
> comparing children with SRS scores above the suggested cutoff with children
> below the suggested cutoff, those who were vitamin D deficient at mid-
> gestation were 3.8 times more likely to be screened positive than those who
> were vitamin D sufficient at mid-gestation (see also Supplementary Table 4).

(SRS is the Social Responsiveness Scale)

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jcoffland
> We would not recommend more sun exposure, because of the increased risk of
> skin cancer.

Broad spectrum lamps could be useful here. Exercising your body's natural
ability to produce vitamin D seems like a good idea. There are also other well
documented psychological benefits to controlled fullspectrum light exposure.

* [http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/seasonal-affective-disord...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/seasonal-affective-disorder-bring-on-the-light-201212215663)

* [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181775/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181775/)

~~~
jryan49
I though vitamin D was produced via UVB rays? How would a lamp without UV
allow the body to produce vitamin d?

~~~
jcoffland
[https://www.amazon.com/s?field-keywords=uvb](https://www.amazon.com/s?field-
keywords=uvb)

------
kovrik
What does 'linked' word mean here?

I see that verb in biological/medical articles very often and it always makes
me think that researchers are very unsure about the results. It is like 'We
believe there is a correlation, but we don't know for sure'.

Am I wrong?

~~~
a_bonobo
I agree with you, the effect size is relatively small, here's the main table:

[http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/mp201...](http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/mp2016213t3.html#figure-
title)

Beta is the effect size here, which ranges from 0.07 to 0.03, not exactly
high. The p-values may be tiny but that's just a measure of the likelihood of
getting these effect sizes by chance.

>These results imply that, after correcting for confounding variables (see
notes under Table 3), those who were deficient at time of birth had on average
0.06 point higher gender-weighted SRS score, which corresponds to an increase
of approximately one fourth of the s.d. (s.d. of the SRS in the total
sample=0.23

Now is 0.06 a large growth for SRS? Let's have a look at the scale of that
value:

>The SRS-A mean total score was highest in the ASD sample [autism disorder] (M
= 78.5, SD = 13.7), intermediate in the CLIN [other disorders] (M = 63.4, SD =
15.4), and lowest in the TD [typically developing, 'normal ] (M = 55.5, SD =
9.9)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3425739/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3425739/)

So you have about 10 points on average between these groups, an effect size of
0.06 doesn't seem extreme to me (but it is nevertheless linked!)

------
Neliquat
To extrapolate a bit too far; Basement dwellers beget basement dwellers.

Serious thought: Can these traits be considered (de)evolutionary after 2
generations? Will more wealthy bloodlines become better due to improved diet
and care? Do we need to start incentivising going outside more often? Or just
scale back the demonization of sunlight exposure? Or do we just start a social
program mailing out sunlamps as a preventitive measure?

~~~
Nomentatus
I'm not sure that mentioning epigenetics, etc, is really going "too far." It's
not unlikely, and epigenetics isn't exactly speculative science anymore. Yes,
the comment is flip, and eschews the proper (but quite recent) scientific
terms but it is very closely aligned with the science. There's no shortage of
evidence of better longevity for the privileged, and better health, for
example, although better nutrition from higher-value foods is a more usual
speculative cause of this mentioned by researchers.

~~~
nnyms
I am from Southern India (typically darker skin) and have noticed 6 cases of
ASD (non-verbal and very basic or non-existent social interaction) amongst
friends and relatives. 3 of these cases come from the same family (mine) and
the other 3 are unrelated. All 6 were born either in the US or UK. All 4
families don't have previous occurrence of ASD or similar symptoms (non-verbal
or awkward social skills would be easy to pick up).

Since reading/experiencing a family member with ASD, I do see some ASD
characteristics and behaviors in some other family members residing in India
but they somehow have been able to overcome that and lead a typical life.
Can't explain why there aren't more severe cases (in which case, they would've
been reported) and if more sunlight or exposure to a lot more people/social
situations is helping correct it.

There was an Indian news article that reported a higher incidence of ASD in
NRIs (non-resident Indians). With Desk jobs becoming more prevalent, Vitamin D
deficiency is showing up in India as well. Given my small #samples, it does
seem like something is triggering more severe ASD in people with dark-skin in
countries with less sunlight. Increase in incidences of ASD, can be attributed
to its broadened definition but there seem to be other minor reasons (Vitamin
D being one) which need more research instead of dismissal. Current incidence
levels of 1 in 68 (boys - 1 in 42, girls - 1 in 189) is plain crazy and needs
more attention.

