Autism and Fevers

[ysabetwordsmith]

This study suggests a link between autism and fevers during pregnancy.  While there are many possible triggers, this is the first I've seen mentioned of fevers.

What snagged my attention is that this could be a temperature-related effect.  (It could also be triggered by immune response, but this seems less likely given that ibuprofen seemed to avoid it.)  If the trigger is activated by temperature, then higher environmental temperatures could produce the same outcome.  Environmental temperatures are rising; autism rates are rising.  This makes me wonder what autism rates would look like if mapped against global temperatures and the availability of air conditioning.

Then I wonder if people with autism are better, the same, or worse equipped to deal with environmental stressors such as excessive heat.  That is, could this be an adaptive response, or is it simply a result of high temperatures during pregnancy?

Another factor, not mentioned in the article, is that this could be a vaccine link that nobody's noticed yet.  Pregnant women are nagged to take vaccines, but the most common result of that is ... running a fever for several days as the body tries to kill it with fire.  If running a fever while pregnant can affect the baby, in this or other ways, then people might want to reconsider that advice or at least equip more informed consent regarding the pros and cons.  Not like medics give a flying fuck about informed consent, or women, but it's a nice fantasy.

Comments

[we_are_spc]

I could actually see that. So...not the vaccines themselves, but when you take them being the issue.

I'd love to see anti-vacxxers fall over their shit to validate their arguments with this piece of news.

...

Sorry, I'm all about vaccinations. Maybe I'd be one of those to wait until they're two, but after that? Game the fuck on.

-T~

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I admire the principle of vaccines far more than the execution. In theory, they can work. But when you add money and power to science, you don't have science anymore. The structure of how these products are made and distributed is deeply troubling.

They're also grossly misrepresented. The public thinks that vaccines protect from disease. They don't. What they do is improve your odds. Sometimes that improvement is large, but other times it's small. Consider that the flu vaccine is only about 33% effective in a good year. In a bad year it's completely useless. Every time you take a vaccine, you risk crippling injury or death. The risk is small, but the numbers of people are large, which means society chooses to murder a few in hopes of saving others. But some people don't wish to participate, and others think they have a right to force them, which leads to very bad places. Just to name one: if the government can force you to have a vaccine, it can forbid you to have one.

Another problem is that the complications are routinely and vehemently hidden. The fever issue is just one possibility, and indeed, autism is only one possible effect if fever during pregnancy disrupts delicate brain development. Likely there would be many others, so I'd love to see a study of other things such as cerebral palsy to see if they also correlate.

Vaccines can be useful. But America is being very careless and tyrannical in ways that are causing people to resist. That will ultimately do a lot more harm than good.

Re: Well ...

[(Anonymous)]

I think there is a vaccine for Lyme Disease that is not sold, because the company that holds the patent does not think it would be cost-effective to make. I would get that vaccine if I could.

The other question - how damaging would pandemic diseases be without vaccines? Before vaccines people could either try to create immunity by childhood exposure or quarantine infected persons, both of which (I think) are usually more dangerous than vaccinations. One quarantine procedure involved /boarding up the house with everyone inside/ and /posting armed gaurds/ until the house had been disease free for at least a few weeks.

I think people should be able to choose for themselves whether or not to take vaccinations. However, some activities may be restricted to non-vaccinated persons (ie treating infectious patients, and some forms of travel should maybe require quarantines). And I think it is F-ing STUPID and DANGEROUS to lie about your vaccination status.

[ayebydan]

Could you not talk about me like some sort of lab rat? This post makes my blood boil to be honest. You talk about people with autism as if we're a different species to be looked at under a scope.

And I read this when more eugenics crap comes out about trying to find and delete the autism gene while once again ignoring the thoughts or feelings of anyine who is actually autistic.

Vaccines do NOT cause autism. I am sick of reading this utter drivel. People with autism have ALWAYS been here. What is happening now is more of us are getting a diagnosis and making sense of our lives instead of feeling like we are broken or having some neurotypican shut us away in an assylum because of THEIR failure to understand us. I don't know what you lot are doing on your side but women here are not nagged to take vaccines. They are encouraged to stay away from people who are NOT vaccinated.

And the flu is a virus that mutates every year into several strains. Smallpox and measles ect tend to remain close enough to the original vaccine strand to remain effective. Basic high school biology. Or at least here it is.

Seriously, this pissed me off. If you want to ponder autism and its causes try to word yourself better.

[dewline]

Amen.

[gingicat]

YES. Ysabet, this absolutely infuriated me.

My mom had a fever occasionally while she was pregnant with me, and I'm not autistic.

I don't ever run a fever, and my son IS autistic.

And if that's your general attitude about vaccines... as we all know, you're a lot better than most people at seeing ramifications down the road, and people who can't see the ramifications will say "Ysabet agrees with me that vaccines are all bad, and she's super-smart" and that will be that.

Not so incidentally, the severe measles epidemic in Samoa is being blamed on the citizens believing American antivaxxers.

Even if fevers and vaccines DID cause autism, I'd rather have a living child (and self) than a dead one.

[gingicat]

Also, pregnancy elevates progesterone, which elevates body temperature. A spike in basal temperature is one of the signs of implantation.

How well-controlled was this study, exactly?

[chanter1944]

What gingicat said, but from me. I'm all out of eloquence. I don't know which dismays me more, the assumption of gross, casual negligence on a grand scale as regards vaccine manufacture (you sound like my sister the antivaxxer, where intelligence gives way to conspiracy) or the turning of the metaphorical microscope on the spectrum and those on it, if not seeking correctable quote unquote defects in a pattern yourself, then certainly doing legwork for those who would, whether or not you meant to. The latter, frankly, surprises me unpleasantly.

... Evidently I was not entirely out of words after all.

[tree_and_leaf]

Hear, hear.

[arlie]

A connection between hot weather and fever during pregnancy seems specious. A connection between hot weather and autism seems even more specious given the increasing proportion of American mothers living with central air conditioning during the increase in recorded autism rates.

Add to this that autism often runs in families - at least 3 generations in mine, probably 4 or more - with births dating back to WWII, or to 1902 if we're right about my grandmother - and I find the whole thing even less plausible.

Of course this is all made even more complicated by the changing definition of autism, aka autistic spectrum disorders. With the DSM IV, my family members all had Asperger's syndrome - with the current DSM, we're autistic.

Fever in pregnancy may be a risk factor, but I'd be shocked to find that the rate of fever in pregnancy has gone up substantially in the past few decades. I'd expect it's more likely to have gone down.

Finally, what I really need to know is whether the data on fever in pregnancy was based on retrospective self report. I'm extremely willing to believe that mothers who consider their children to be defective in some way scour their past history looking for reasons, and find some, whereas those without problems do not.

[thewayne]

Interesting concept.

My wife just told me that they recently conducted an in-utero bone marrow transplant!

Mind *poof*