ArticleNature medicine2025
Familial confounding in the associations between maternal health and autism.
Article in Nature medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Prenatal maternal psychological distress and the risk of autism spectrum disorders in offspring: results from a meta-analysis of observational studies.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Maternal paracetamol (acetaminophen) use during pregnancy and risk of autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in offspring: umbrella review of systematic reviews.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Pooled it
- Maternal genetic liability to autism spectrum disorders and pregnancy outcomes.Archives of women's mental health · 2026Article
- Cross-Setting Replication of the Associations Between Maternal Health and Autism.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Article
- Burden and risk factors of autism spectrum disorder: global study and analysis.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Genetic confounding in the associations between maternal health and autism.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Maternal health and autism risk: parsing direct and indirect genetic effects using 3-generation family linkage.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Can Psychiatric Genetics Advance Without Incorporating a Life Course Perspective?Biological psychiatry · 2026Review
- The dual face of human chorionic gonadotropin in the CNS: neuroprotection, signaling, and possible pathological effects.Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · 2026Review
- Autism Heterogeneity Related to Preterm Birth: Multi-Ancestry Results From the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge Sample.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Neurodevelopmental Impact of Maternal Immune Activation and Autoimmune Disorders, Environmental Toxicants and Folate Metabolism on Autism Spectrum Disorder.Current issues in molecular biology · 2025Review
- The autism 'epidemic': misinterpretation, misinformation and conspiracy.European journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Gut microbiota and urine metabolomics signature in autism spectrum disorder children from Southern China.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
- Accounting for Comorbidity in Etiologic Research.Clinical epidemiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Evidence suggests that maternal health in pregnancy is associated with autism in the offspring. However, most diagnoses in pregnant women have not been examined, and the role of familial confounding remains unknown. Our cohort included all children born in Denmark between 1998 and 2015 (n = 1,131,899) and their parents. We fitted Cox proportional hazard regression models to estimate the likelihood of autism associated with each maternal prenatal ICD-10 diagnosis, accounting for disease chronicity and comorbidity, familial correlations and sociodemographic factors. We examined the evidence for familial confounding using discordant sibling and paternal negative control designs. Among the 1,131,899 individuals in our sample, 18,374 (1.6%) were diagnosed with autism by the end of follow-up. Across 236 maternal diagnoses we tested (prevalence ≥0.1%), 30 were significantly associated with autism after accounting for sociodemographic factors, disorder chronicity and comorbidity, and correction for multiple testing. This included obstetric, cardiometabolic and psychiatric disorders (for example, diabetes in pregnancy (hazard ratio (HR) 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08-1.31) and depression (HR 1.49, 95% CI 1.27-1.75)), previously shown to be associated with autism. Family-based analyses provided strong evidence for familial confounding in most of the observed associations. Our findings indicate pervasive associations between maternal health in pregnancy and offspring autism and underscore that these associations are largely attributable to familial confounding.
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