Maternal Mediterranean-Style Diet During Pregnancy and Child Social Impairment as Measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale.
Xiaoyu Che, Xueqi Qu, Ramkripa Raghaven and 5 others
PMID 40583365WHAT IT FOUND
Mothers with higher Mediterranean-style diet scores during pregnancy had children with lower social impairment scores.
The association held for social communication and cognition subdomains after adjusting for demographics. No single food group drove the effect, suggesting overall diet quality matters more than specific items.
Key findings
01Children of mothers in the highest tertile of Mediterranean-style diet score had significantly lower total Social Responsiveness Scale scores compared to those in the lowest tertile, even after adjusting for covariates.
02After adjustment, the association between maternal diet and child social impairment remained significant only for the social cognition and social communication subdomains, not for other domains like restricted behaviors.
03Analysis of individual food components showed no single food group significantly drove the association after controlling for overall diet quality, indicating the benefit likely comes from the combined pattern.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Dietary data was collected retrospectively after delivery using a qualitative food frequency questionnaire, which lacks portion size information and is subject to recall and social desirability bias. SRS measurements were only available for a subset of the original cohort, and the included participants differed from those excluded (e.g., more likely to be born preterm or identified as non-Hispanic Black), raising concerns about selection bias. The study population was enriched for preterm births and socioeconomic disadvantage, which may limit generalizability to the broader population. Residual confounding is possible despite adjustments, particularly given the varying ages at which SRS was administered. The association was observational, so it cannot establish that maternal diet directly caused the differences in child social impairment.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that adopting a Mediterranean diet during pregnancy prevents autism or social impairment. The study shows an association with lower scores on a continuous measure of social difficulty in a specific cohort, not a reduction in ASD diagnosis, and the effect size is modest.