New Research Finds No Link Between Flu And Autism During Pregnancy

Mothers who experienced influenza during their pregnancy has nothing to worry about having a child that could have autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A new study published on November 28 showed that there is no link between a mother having the flu during pregnancy and ASD in their unborn child.
In an article released by Science Daily, over 196,000 kids were used for this study by scientists who would like to test if influenza could affect a pregnancy that it could result to ASD in children when they are born. The good news is that they found no relation between the two.

This research was headed by Dr. Ousseny Zerbo from Kaiser Permanente Northern California. The result of this study was also based on children being born from 2000 to 2010 at 24 weeks of age. About. 0.7 percent of these children came from mothers who had influenza while they were pregnant while 23 percent of the mothers have influenza after they were vaccinated during pregnancy.

Only 1.6 percent were found out to have ASD. That number gave away the conclusion for scientists that not even the flu shots are related to for kids to have ASD when their mother is pregnant with them. There was possibly an increased in the risk of having a child with autism if a mother decides to get a flu shot during pregnancy, but they said that it is still not enough to confirm that it could be the case because of the many underlying factors.

AAP News Journals also reported this study saying that this finally answers the questions from previous researches regarding this issue. There used to be mixed results when scientists attempted to find the link between influenza and ASD in babies from pregnant mothers. But the thing with before is that they didn't look into maternal vaccination, which scientists did this time.