Prenatal toxoplasmosis antibody and childhood autism.
Marisa N Spann, Andre Sourander, Heljä-Marja Surcel and 2 others
PMID 27874276WHAT IT FOUND
Mothers with T. gondii IgM antibodies were less likely to have a child with autism, but only a few mothers had these antibodies.
Children of mothers with IgG antibodies did not show a clear increase in autism risk.
Key findings
01Offspring of mothers seropositive for T. gondii IgM antibodies had lower odds of childhood autism (OR=0.40, 95% CI=0.18 to 0.91, p=0.03).
02Maternal seropositivity for T. gondii IgG antibodies was not significantly associated with increased odds of childhood autism (OR=1.09, 95% CI=0.86 to 1.38, p=0.47).
03Low seropositive T. gondii IgG levels in the first quartile were associated with increased odds compared with seronegative mothers (OR=1.65, 95% CI=1.10 to 2.49, p=0.018), but this post-hoc result did not meet the stricter threshold of 0.016.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study is observational, so it cannot show that maternal T. gondii antibody status caused or prevented autism. Only a small number of mothers were seropositive for IgM, so that finding may be unstable. The serum was drawn during pregnancy, but the timing of the infection was unclear, and some IgM positives may have been infected before pregnancy. Other infections and immune factors were not measured, so residual confounding is possible. The low IgG quartile result was a post-hoc analysis and did not meet the stricter significance threshold. The authors had no information on the biological effect of low T. gondii IgG.
Declared interests
The authors report no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that maternal T. gondii infection protects against autism. The IgM result came from few seropositive mothers, the timing of infection was unclear, and IgG seropositivity showed no significant increase.