Severity of ASD symptoms and their correlation with the presence of copy number variations and exposure to first trimester ultrasound.
Sara Jane Webb, Michelle M Garrison, Raphael Bernier and 3 others
PMID 27582229WHAT IT FOUND
First trimester ultrasound was linked to increased repetitive behaviors in children with ASD, but also to lower social affective symptoms.
In males with specific genetic variations, it correlated with lower non-verbal IQ. These findings suggest a possible interaction, but do not prove ultrasound causes these outcomes.
Key findings
01Exposure to first trimester ultrasound was associated with greater parent-reported restrictive and repetitive behaviors in all children with ASD.
02In the subset of male children with ASD and identified copy number variations (CNVs), first trimester ultrasound exposure was associated with statistically significantly lower non-verbal IQ and increased observed repetitive behaviors.
03Contrary to the hypothesis, first trimester ultrasound exposure was associated with lower observed social affective symptoms in the total ASD sample.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Ultrasound exposure was assessed via parent report for children aged 4 to 18, introducing potential recall error regarding the timing and presence of scans. The study is observational and cannot prove causation; residual confounding factors (such as maternal age and income) may influence both the likelihood of receiving an ultrasound and child outcomes. The sample size for females with identified CNVs was too small to analyze separately, limiting conclusions about sex differences. The specificity of the findings to ASD is unclear, as lower IQ and repetitive behaviors are also seen in other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Declared interests
The study used data from the Simons Simplex Collection, which is funded by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. No specific conflicts of interest for the authors of this paper are listed in the provided text beyond the funding source of the dataset.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these associations as proof that first trimester ultrasound causes ASD severity. The study is observational, relies on parental recall, and cannot rule out confounding variables such as maternal age and socioeconomic status, which are known to influence both prenatal care utilization and child development.