Autism-World

There have been a lot of chemicals and other stuff which were blamed for triggering autism, like pesticides, pitocin, alcohol, wifi, sleep apnea and so on. Recently, studies that focus on the connections between genes and environmental factors have suggested that the cause of autism may link to pet shampoo, according to the results presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research in London.

There is this particular insecticide called pyrethrins in some kind of pet shampoos that is being considered the cause of autism this time. It is reported that families with autistic kids were twice as likely using pet shampoos with pyrethrins as those with normal children. And, if the mother used the shampoo during the forth and sixth month while pregnancy, the risk of the baby having autism will be the greatest. The above conclusions were based on survey results of 333 autistic children and 198 healthy children.

“Autism is associated with an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters within the brain, and one could hypothesise that children with an imbalance in this system may be more sensitive to the effects of pyrethrins,” says Isaac Pessah at UC Davis, who was also involved in the study.

Pyrethrins may increase the risk of having autism and other developmental disorders, however, they are not possible to be the only cause of autism, which is increasingly recognised as being triggered by both environmental and genetic factors.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Autism Education Issues.