May 2010: Autism, ethnicity and maternal immigration

Autism has been the subject of intense public and professional attention in recent years. One of the biggest questions is what causes it. Like the discoveries made about schizophrenia in the late 20th century, we are learning that autism too has genetic and environmental determinants. Here Dr Daphne Keen discusses her paper (Keen et al, 2010) which attempts to answer the question of whether maternal immigration and ethnicity, together or in tandem, are implicated as being risk factors in young children who develop autism.

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Audio running time: 18:19 minutes

 

Credits: 0.5

 

Learning outcomes

 

By the end of this podcast, we hope you will be able to:

 

  • understand the background history which led to this study, and be able to describe some of the basic clinical features and routes to diagnosis of a child with autism

 

  • describe the methods, advantages and limitations of a retrospective epidemiological retrospective study, and how this study design was applied in this case

 

  • understand the principle of confounding factors, and be aware of the types of confounding factors which need to be considered when investigating immigration and ethnicity

 

  • have an understanding of how studies of this type can help shape services and future research.

 

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If you like this podcast, you may also be interested in the following:

 

Neurobiology of ADHD by Dr Katia Rubia

 

Anxiety disorders in children by Prof Ronald Rapee

 

 

 

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