Abstract
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) affect approximately 1 in 110 children in the United States. This report profiles fetal-brain reactive autoantibodies of a large cohort of mothers of children with autism and controls, yielding significant associations between the presence of IgG reactivity to fetal brain proteins at 37 and 73 kDa and a childhood diagnosis of full autism (p = 0.0005), which also correlated with lower expressive language scores (p = 0.005). Additionally, we report on reactivity to proteins at 39 and 73 kDa, which correlated with the broader diagnosis of ASD (p = 0.0007) and increased irritability on the Aberrant Behavioral Checklist (p = 0.05). This study provides evidence of multiple patterns of reactivity to fetal brain proteins by maternal antibodies associated with ASD and specific childhood behavioral outcomes.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge their funding sources for this work: NIEHS 1 P01 ES11269-01, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) through the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program (Grant R829388), the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute.
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Braunschweig, D., Duncanson, P., Boyce, R. et al. Behavioral Correlates of Maternal Antibody Status Among Children with Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 42, 1435–1445 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1378-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-011-1378-7