Autism and Old Fathers

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TPE2
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06 Dec 2010, 1:29 pm

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/1 ... thers.html

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The association between old fathers and autism has been known for many years, and the most popular explanation has been genetic: sperm from older men are more likely to have accumulated DNA damage, which might lead to autism.

As I've said before, this might explain some other puzzling things such as the fact that autism is more common in the wealthy; it might even explain any recent increases in the prevalence of autism, if people nowadays are waiting longer to have kids.

But there are other possibilities. It might be that the fathers of autistic people tend to have mild autistic symptoms themselves (which they do), and this makes them likely to delay having children, because they're socially anxious and so take longer to get married, or whatever. It's not implausible.

The new study aimed to control for this, by looking at parents who had two or more children, at least one of them with autism, and at least one without it. Even within such families, the autistic children tended to have older fathers when they were born - that is to say, they were born later. See the graphs below for details. This seems to rule out explanations based on the characteristics of the parents.

(...)

However, there's another objection, the "experienced parent" theory. Maybe if parents have already had one neurotypical child, they're better at spotting the symptoms of autism in subsequent children, by comparison with the first one.

The authors tried to account for this as well, by controlling for the birth-order ("parity") of the kids. They also controlled for the mother's age amongst several other factors such as year of birth and history of mental illness in the parents. The results were still highly significant: older fathers meant a higher risk of autism. As if that wasn't enough, they also did a meta-analysis of all the previous studies and confirmed the same thing.

Any thoughts?

aspi-rant
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06 Dec 2010, 1:31 pm

autistic man are late(r) having a partner... and kids.

so no need for "DNA damage"... the genes were already there.

wavefreak58
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06 Dec 2010, 1:35 pm

What about older mothers? If it correlates to older men only then wouldn't that indicate a Y chromosome issue?

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poopylungstuffing
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06 Dec 2010, 2:16 pm

My dad is more "NT" than I am, and I was born when he was 20. HIS dad and moreso his dad's younger brother (my great uncle) had a lot of ASish traits and did not have kids till he was 42..My dad and his older brother might have a few traits..they are obsessive in their interests, and are of above average intelligence...but tend to be rather gregarious and social, and don't have the sorts of dysfunctions that I have...(which I seem to have inherited from my ASish mom to a degree)..She was 25 when I was born..which I would not consider to be old for having kids...my NT sister was born when she was 30

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aspi-rant
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06 Dec 2010, 2:20 pm

wavefreak58 wrote:

What about older mothers? If it correlates to older men only then wouldn't that indicate a Y chromosome issue?

no... girls can have autism too... ;-)

Simonono
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06 Dec 2010, 2:21 pm

My dad generally doesn't like to socialize, he would prefer to read a book with some wine rather than go to a pub and drink beer. That is his only trait that would come close to autism. He says like me he was incredibly shy with girls when he was my age (although nobody can get any worse than me). Then again, he pretty much didn't meet a girl until he went to Africa with the Navy (He went to an all-boys school). He is 56, and was 39 when I was born, I don't know if that's classed as very late. I am his 5th and last child. Also my cousin (my dad's sister's daughter) apparently has Asperger's, but I wouldn't know because I haven't seen her in many years.

wavefreak58
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06 Dec 2010, 2:34 pm

aspi-rant wrote:

wavefreak58 wrote:

What about older mothers? If it correlates to older men only then wouldn't that indicate a Y chromosome issue?

no... girls can have autism too... ;-)

It is likely that there are multiple genetic factors. Since the prevalence of male to female is 4 to 1, isn't it possible that the Y chromosome carries genes that make males more susceptible to autism?

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torako
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06 Dec 2010, 2:41 pm

wavefreak58 wrote:

aspi-rant wrote:

wavefreak58 wrote:

What about older mothers? If it correlates to older men only then wouldn't that indicate a Y chromosome issue?

no... girls can have autism too... ;-)

it seems much more likely that the current diagnostic criteria and doctors are biased against girls and therefore undiagnosed female aspies are more common than undiagnosed male aspies... autism shows up differently in girls but doctors are more likely to notice the male version...

CockneyRebel
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06 Dec 2010, 2:57 pm

My dad was 25 when I was born.

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kruger4
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06 Dec 2010, 3:10 pm

Well I don't know if it's because of the genes or because of men having babies when they're older but I can say this: my dad is definitely pretty old, he was 47 when he had me. It also definitely feels like he has aspergers. Whatever the case is, the study is definitely right but it doesn't really matter tbh the damage is already done.

kruger4
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06 Dec 2010, 3:42 pm

Tbh I'm tired of thinking about reasons why people might have aspergers, if you know you have it you should try and deal with it and look towards the future to try and better yourself instead of looking back, it's not gonna change anything. Although I don't have anything against people that want to discuss this, feel free to.

buryuntime
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06 Dec 2010, 4:28 pm

I don't think older fathers has much to do with it.

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