Lanterna Rally

Author: Tanya Khemet Taiwo

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781392205341

Early life experience can impact lifelong health; one of the earliest potentially adverse experiences is in-utero exposure to maternal stress, anxiety or depression. This project examined whether maternal social, economic and mental health stressors have an impact on a child’s diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and whether these stressors can modify the risk of ASD from environmental exposures. First, we investigated whether the maternal economic and mental health stressors have independent effects on child’s neurodevelopmental outcome. Data from the CHARGE (Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment) Study, a population-based case-control study, were used to examine whether maternal periconceptional and prenatal exposures and experiences were associated with increased risk of ASD in the child. Specifically, maternal inability to pay for basic needs (food, housing, medical care and heating) and maternal prenatal psychological distress were explored for their association with the child’s ASD diagnosis. Our data showed that both financial hardship and maternal mood disorders during pregnancy were associated with increased risk of child ASD. Secondly, we explored the effects of maternal stressors to determine if they modified or acted synergistically with environmental chemical exposures to alter a child’s developmental diagnosis. Neighborhood level environmental exposures and sociodemographic factors were obtained from the California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool, a methodology developed by Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that identifies California communities that are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of pollution and socioeconomic disadvantage. Geographic based relative measures of seven environmental exposures, five indicators of the effects of pollution, and seven population characteristics and socioeconomic factors, create percentile scores for all of California’s census tracts. Findings suggest Air quality measures are associated with ASD risk, and that this risk varies based on maternal mental state. Finally, we examined the interaction between the maternal prenatal experience and residential proximity to agricultural application of organophosphate pesticides for their effects on risk for ASD in the offspring. This study identified financial hardship as an amplifier of the association between organophosphate pesticide exposures during pregnancy and offspring ASD. These results add to the existing evidence highlighting the importance of studying the co-exposure of social and environmental exposures affecting children at early developmental stages. In this investigation, we have shown that maternal mental health financial hardship are potential environmental risk factors for ASD, and that these experiences amplify the effect of air pollution and pesticide exposures. These findings have relevance for public health and provide hope for strategies that can reduce risk factors for this devastating diagnosis. Strategies may involve maternal child health interventions, poverty reduction programs and attention to environmental toxins.