A new study suggests that pregnant women who are both obese and diabetic have a higher risk of giving birth to an autistic child than healthy women, CBS News reports.
The study noted that the two conditions, together, nearly quadrupled the risk that a child would be autistic.
"The finding is not a total surprise," said study author Dr. Xiaobin Wang, director of the Center on Early Life Origins of Disease at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Many studies have shown that maternal obesity and diabetes have an adverse impact on developing fetuses and their long-term metabolic health."
"Now we have further evidence that maternal obesity and diabetes also impact the long-term neural development of their children," added Wang.
The study found that diabetic mothers, who were not obese, were at twice the risk of giving birth to a child with autism, as compared to mothers of normal weight without diabetes.
"Our research highlights that the risk for autism begins in utero," said co-author M. Daniele Fallin, PhD, chair of the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health and director of the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, according to Science Daily.
"It's important for us to now try to figure out what is it about the combination of obesity and diabetes that is potentially contributing to sub-optimal fetal health."
The study doesn't prove a cause and effect relation between obesity and diabetes together and autism, however. It only found an association.
It is possible that increased inflammation, nutrients and hormones linked to diabetes and obesity may be responsible for the added autism risk, said Elinor Sullivan, a biology and neuroscience researcher at the University of Portland, in Oregon, who wasn't involved in the study, according to Reuters.
"These factors impact how the brain develops," Sullivan said. "The risk for autism would be further increased if women were obese and had diabetes as the levels of inflammatory factors and nutrients that the offspring would be exposed to would be further elevated."
For the study, the researchers tracked more than 2,700 births. It involved children born at Boston Medical Center between 1998 and 2014.
The study, was published online Jan. 29 in the journal Pediatrics.
The combination of maternal obesity and diabetes was also linked to a higher risk for giving birth to a child with an intellectual disability, the researchers said.
However, the increased risk for intellectual disability was mostly witnessed among babies who were simultaneously diagnosed with autism.
Wang said more study would be required to establish the combination of maternal obesity and diabetes with autism.
But Andrea Roberts, a research associate at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, suggested otherwise.
"I think in this case it probably is causal," she said. "And therefore if women are able to change their weight status and avoid diabetes they might actually prevent the increase in autism risk in their children."
