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[Sophie2015]

T

 

[kelz86]

I had loads of scans with my dd and she's now a clever 3year old did her no harm x

 

[hanni]

My brother is highly autistic and this was before ultrasounds were introduced so my mum had none. Autism is genetic.

 

[Misscalais]

I don't believe anything causes Autism, a child is born with it.
I had so many scans in my last pregnancy and hes a happy healthy 15 month old.

 

[Scout]

No, I wasn't. Ultrasounds don't cause autism. I was an older mom too and had ultrasounds weekly from week 6 thru 15 and then every 2 weeks and then when I saw the perinatologist I would have 2 ultrasounds in one week. My daughter is fine.

 

[AP]

Thanks to a premature birth and brain damage my first daughter has ASD. My 2nd daughter had countless scans thanks to that early arrival and she is not on the spectrum.

You know, you could probably google goats cause autism and google will tell you you are right. Don't worry about it!

 

[Sophie2015]

I didn't Google anything. I'm a healthcare professional. This study was presented to me by a colleague.

 

[MrsWag]

Ultrasounds can't cause Autism, as a someone working in that area I can reassure you. Autism is genetic and cannot be influenced by things such as ultrasounds so you have no need to worry

 

[MindUtopia]

I would have a good read of the study and see what they're controlling for. I've never heard of this link and I'm a public health researcher, but often when you see these sorts of claims being made in one study that haven't been found in others, there are other variables that can help explain it. It could be that early scans are much more common in subsequent pregnancies where there have been complications in the first, which lead to autism, so people with a genetic predisposition to having a child with ASD have more scans because that link is already established. People who have more scans for whatever reason might also be more likely to have a child with ASD because of that or a related reason, not because the scans themselves caused it.

There has been some evidence of a link between maternal health issues (usually serious infections, like influenza) in pregnancy and c-sections with ASD. And both maternal health problems and complications that would lead to a c-section would likely also involve having more scans as a result, etc. So that correlation would make sense, even if there is no evidence of causation.

If you are worried though and there is no reason to have the extra scans, you certainly don't have to. If your health is potentially at risk (they're worried about an ectopic, etc.), that's one thing. If it's just to check how things are going and that in itself causes worry because of that scans, then there's no medical reason to have them if you don't want to. But there are some countries where scans are done at every appt (I think Germany is one?), which adds up to a lot of scans, and those countries don't seem to obviously have higher rates of ASD controlling for other things.

 

[AP]

I didn't Google anything. I'm a healthcare professional. This study was presented to me by a colleague.

I was merely suggesting that it seems to be the trend that everything is linked to autism.

 

[neverbeast88]

Sounds a bit like scare mongering. Next week there will be an article on how oxygen from the atmosphere causes spontaneous combustion when you eat a slice of bread at 2pm in a Wednesday afternoon.

 

[Sophie2015]

Sounds a bit like scare mongering. Next week there will be an article on how oxygen from the atmosphere causes spontaneous combustion when you eat a slice of bread at 2pm in a Wednesday afternoon.

.

 

[neverbeast88]

Sounds a bit like scare mongering. Next week there will be an article on how oxygen from the atmosphere causes spontaneous combustion when you eat a slice of bread at 2pm in a Wednesday afternoon.

Well then I hope you eat a slice of bread at 2pm "in" a Wednesday afternoon

Well someone just showed their true colours didn't they.

 

[jtink28]

my goodness, sophie, no one is attacking you. there's no reason to be nasty.

i had tons of scans with my son. he's a healthy little boy with no signs of autism. some people believe autism comes from different things - vaccines, ultrasounds, medications, whatever. i personally believe it's genetic. you don't have to have more ultrasounds if you don't want to.

but, if someone questions you, there's no reason to be snippy and mean. let's just say you reacted badly due to hormones and leave it at that.

 

[squirrel.]

I would be dubious about the validity of a study claiming ultrasounds cause autism. I haven't read it so obviously can't say, but I would be surprised if it was a thorough study with an adequate sample size and a good control over extraneous variables. I imagine if there had been studies that had found a link that this would have been pounced on by press by now.

My son is autistic and my daughter is not. With my son we had 6 scans in the first tri and with my daughter we had 2. Yet it wasn't the ultrasounds that made my son autistic, rather that his genetic predisposition to be autistic led him to be. Autism is largely linked to genetics. My husband's family in particular show a lot of autistic traits and now We have an autistic son. Twin studies have found that if one identical twin is autistic then the other is highly likely to be (I forget the exact statistic).

Try not to worry too much about autism. It's the new buzz word in terms of childhood conditions and now we are inundated with: don't do this it causes autism. You have a high high chance of not having an autistic child.

 

[magnacarta]

The advice I give everyone is this: if you are concerned about a link between x and y (in this case, ultrasounds and autism), try to find the original research article. Google Scholar allows you to search for articles, and if a colleague or friend told you about a study, ask for them to share it with you.

You may already know this, but you'll want to make sure that the study is peer-reviewed and not simply summarized on a website. You'll want to pay attention to how many people were in the study, and who those people were. You'll also want to pay attention to who conducted the study. As a scientist, I'd say that the only way to determine whether ultrasounds are (or are not) linked to autism is to assign a large number of mothers to either have (1) many or (2) few ultrasounds. This would be the only way I could think of to show a that ultrasounds do (or don't) cause autism. As others have noted, if you just look at the *correlation* between the number of ultrasounds and autism, you'll likely find a relation, because higher risk patients are both more likely to get ultrasounds and have a child with autism (in other words, knowing how many ultrasounds someone had might help you *predict* if a child will have autism, but that's not because ultrasounds *caused* autism).

If you aren't familiar with or comfortable with reading scientific articles from journals, feel free to post or PM me, and if you send me the article (or a citation), I'd be happy to try to help you evaluate the article yourself.

Cheers to all!

 

[Sophie2015]

[