Autism-World

Q: My nephew has autism. Does that increase the odds that a child I father will have autism?

Answer:

My brother has four kids, two with autism, so I have become obsessed with autism.

I taped a lecture by Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D. of the M.I.N.D. where she stated that when one child has autism, the odds of having another child with autism increase by at least 600%. But outside the immediate family, the odds do not increase to any where near that degree. She didn’t give many specifics on that but my guess is that you odds of having an autistic child or only a little bit greater than the general public.

And the odds of the general public?
While people like to banter around the stat of 1 out of 166, if you go to the CDC site, you will find that they say it MAY BE as high as 1 out of 166. They actually say the odds are SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 1 out of 500 and 1 out of 166. I suspect the odds of having a child somewhere on the spectrum of autism (From the light cases to the extreme) are about 1 out of 250. The odds of having a non-verbal (like my neice & nephew and worse than RainMan) autistic child would be about 1 out of 1,000.

One study shows that the age of the father is a significant factor in determining the risk of a child.

When the father is over 35, the odds of his child being autistic increase 50%. When he is over 40, the odds increase to about 4X of a young man.

I am very curious about this study because my brother was 36 when his Arianna was born. (2nd born, 1st w/ autism) and he was 40 when Dominic (4th born, 2nd w/ autism) was born.

Technorati : autism

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Ask and answer.