Blue Collar Scientist

It is almost too tempting to avoid making a Jenny McCarthy joke here, so I’m going to avoid it by the skin of my teeth. I’ll just point you to this bit of news.

In another sign pointing to an inherited component to autism, a study released on Monday found that having a schizophrenic parent or a mother with psychiatric problems roughly doubled a child’s risk of being autistic.

“Our research shows that mothers and fathers diagnosed with schizophrenia were about twice as likely to have a child diagnosed with autism,” said Julie Daniels of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who worked on the study.

“We also saw higher rates of depression and personality disorders among mothers, but not fathers,” she said in a statement.

This study has a pretty big n - 1,227 children with autism, compared with families of 31,000 children without autism.

The result is not new; previous studies have supported the conclusions. This study appears in Pediatrics.

No one knows what causes autism, but researchers think it is likely that several genes and possibly environmental factors contribute.