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Parental epilepsy and autism

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Chichikov
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16 Jun 2016, 8:59 am

Saw this in the paper today, this is the article in its entirety, haven't googled for more in-depth details yet but I thought it interesting enough to post;

Quote:
Children of mothers with epilepsy face an almost certain diagnosis of autism, a study found.

Experts found their risk of developing the mental condition was an incredible 91 per cent.

Those with epileptic dads were 36 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with autism.

Overall, brothers, sisters and children of epileptics were found to be at a 63 per cent greater risk.

Medics at Linkoping University Hospital in Sweden studied 264,246 people over six years.

They called for further research into the link.



foxfield
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17 Jun 2016, 4:49 pm

I went googling for this article as it did seem a very interesting finding. I think the first two sentences you have quoted are a misinterpretation though.

The source I looked at said that there was a 91% increased chance of children of epileptic mothers getting autism. In other words, the chances of getting autism with an epileptic mother are still small, but almost double that of an unaffected mother.

This is very different from saying that 91% of children of epileptic mothers get autism. I would doubt very much that that is true, that would seem to be a very unlikely statistic to me.

Here is the source I looked at: Medical news today article



Chichikov
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18 Jun 2016, 6:47 am

Thanks for the link, it certainly makes more sense than the stats quoted in the article.