A study outlined in Science Daily confirmed that "Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age." A father's age only comes into play when the mother is under thirty and her partner significantly older.
The study, published in Autism Research, found an 18% increase in the risk of autism for every five years in a mother's age. A small percentage of the increase in autism diagnoses can be attributed to parents waiting longer to have children, the authors said. The senior author of the study noted that the results were a step in the right direction for understanding the causes of autism, but "We still need to out what it is about older parents that puts their children at greater risk for autism and other adverse outcomes, so that we can begin to design interventions."
You can read the Science Daily summary here.
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