Children born with high blood levels of vitamin D have 25 percent decreased odds of autism compared with those born with low levels. Researchers presented the unpublished results today at the 2018 International Society for Autism Research annual meeting in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
The results come from the largest study yet to explore a link between vitamin D and autism. It involves an analysis of dried blood spots from 3,370 newborns in Sweden, 1,341 of whom now have an autism diagnosis.
The findings reinforce evidence of a link between vitamin D and autism risk. A 2017 study of 4,000 children in the Netherlands, including 68 who have autism, revealed that those born to vitamin D-deficient women have more than twice the autism risk of controls.
