Monday, August 19, 2013

Autism and Labor

Commenter Erin brought up the recent hubbub regarding induced labor and autism, and while I'd like to comment on it, Science Based Medicine has already done a pretty thorough job.  They put the breakdown quite succinctly:
In the case of this study, either inducing/augmenting labor triggers autism in some children, children with autism are more likely to require induced labor, or some other factor(s) is a risk factor for both developing autism and needing to induce or augment labor. This current study does not contain data that can differentiate among these possibilities.
Induced labor is a hard thing to study because (unlike c-sections) induction is very rarely completely elective. It is almost always precipitated by some other complication.  It's an interesting study though, and definitely indicates a need for more research.  Anything that gets people off the vaccine thing makes me happy.


1 comment:

  1. Nice summary. I always love it when people try to boil complex systems down to a simple cause-effect equation.

    Speaking of "the vaccine thing", this is a new explanation I hadn't seen before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo&feature=share

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