Epilepsy Drug Linked to Autism Risk

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Epilepsy Drug Linked to Autism Risk

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AutismNews ... 945&page=1

For a change, cautious, scientifically based, and may in fact lead to some interesting new research.

That's been one of the meds you're NOT supposed to take for seizures for a long time because it causes birth defects. I hate that med, I was on it for a while, it made me gain 5 pounds in one week, all I did everyday was eat and sleep.

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Seems like a pretty obvious correlation to make. It's well known that autism and epilepsy are often co-morbid. That's like saying mothers who are OCD are more likely to give birth to autistic kids, it's just all in the same gene pool.

It makes no sense to me, why would it increase the risk of autism??? Why not lower the risk of autism???? After all autism and seizures are linked so a drug used to cut out seizures shouldn't increase the risk of autism.

There was no causation implied by the study. It didn't say anywhere that the drug caused kids to develop autism. What it said was, women who use this epilepsy drug are more likely to give birth to children who have autism. It's more of a genetic study really, linking women who have epilepsy with children who have autism. One could make similar studies that would appear to the common man as causation studies, when really they are correlational. Let me give you some examples:

Women who drive nice cars are more likely to have children with expensive clothes. The expensive car did not cause the nice clothes, the car and clothes are both a result of the woman having money.

Women who sleep on the floor are more likely to have children who don't go to college. Again, it's not the sleeping on the floor that causes her kid not to go to college, it's the fact that she's so poor she can't afford a bed that she can't afford to pay for her kids college either.

Women who wear contacts are more likely to give birth to children who are nearsighted. It's not the contacts that cause the children to be nearsighted, it's the fact that nearsightedness is an inherited problem that the woman gave the child.

It has been known since 1980 that valproate (Depakote in the US) can cause Fetal Valproate Syndrome and in 1994 autism (Valproate Syndrome and autism), indeed for the last 10 years or so researchers have fed valproate to female mice and rats in order to study how it causes disruption of brain growth during gestation and causes "autism" like behavior in their pups. I don't understand why this is said to be a new discovery, it is not.

Thalidomide also can cause autism.