Smoking maybe a reason for autism!!

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I know my mom used to smoke, I don't know if she ever smoked while pregnant or not but its possible......I have 3 siblings and I am the only one with aspergers.

My mum never smoked, drank, or had any birth difficulties, and I turned out Aspie.

My auntie smoked, drank a bit, and had birth difficulties (had to have a cesarean for all 3 of her children because of this) and all 3 are complete NTs.

Actually, not:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2151289.stm

One of the researchers:

http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=17028&l=en

Here's the actual research paper, although it is sadly not available for free:

http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract ... ism.9.aspx

A bit distant from the Daily Mail. The article actually appeared in Epidemiology (the journal from the above link) which as far as I can tell is peer-reviewed.



The research doesn't claim smoking causes autism, but that it makes it more likely. It is most likely that genes are responsible for autism, but that environmental factors activate epigenetic factors that cause it to manifest, so smoking likely interferes in that way.

Smoking during pregnancy may also increase the chances of children having ADHD, but again I think it is likely only if the genetic predisposition already exists:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 103740.htm

And here is the paper:

http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal. ... 1/abstract

It does not even seem controversial to me that smoking during pregnancy could increase chances of things like this.

does that include exposure to secondhand smoke? cuz neither of my parents smoke but my grandparents smoked like chimneys!

It doesn't look like that was accounted for in the study.

That's interesting. My parents were heavy smokers and I've sometimes wondered whether that played a role in my autism. It seems that it may have increased the chances.

I ended up smoking as well, and it certainly helped with my autism. It calmed me down while at the same time making me more social. I've sometimes wondered whether the exposure to all that nicotine in the womb altered my brain development or gene expression and led me to need nicotine to be more normal. Even now that I quit smoking years ago, I still use nicotine lozenges because even if I go half a year without life is pretty hellish.

I think they should look into nicotine, in a non-harmful form, of course, to see if it has efficacy in treating autism.

More nonsense about what causes autism and finding a "cure" for it? Just great.
Although smoking during pregnancy is stupid and evil.

So is smoking around pregnant women.
And babies who have been born.
And children.
And basically everyone else.

Both my parents smoked, including my mother when she was pregnant with me. Both my paternal grandparents also smoked - and my patrilineal great-grandparents. The home in which I grew up was permanently full of cigarette smoke, and I'm glad it was.

It could be a factor, in nudging some individuals toward autism. And at the same time have nothing to do with the autism of the next autistic person. cant be ruled out as a small environmental factor in some.

But it cant NOT be....THE single … cause of autism.

If you're saying (in the this eight year old thread) that there would be NO autism on the planet if it weren't for Sir Walter Raleigh, then that would be ridiculous.

NO.

Let's move on...

My parents were chain smokers and everyone in their social community would have been too.

Neither of my parents smoked.

My mother was probably exposed to a fair amount of second-hand smoke, though. I was born long before the days when anyone talked about second-hand smoke as a potential danger of any kind.

My parents didn't smoke but we lived near an area that was used for dumping fuel ash / fly ash, which is poisonous.
They lived there during both of my mother's pregnancies.
We moved away, but all my relatives who remained in that location died of cancer.

My mother probably smoked 3-4 packs a day when she was pregnant with me. Then again.....back in 1961, practically every adult smoked that much.

But I don't think smoking caused my autism.

I don't believe smoking causes cancer, either. For one thing, if that were true, autism would be decreasing over time.

There's still a lot of smoking going on---but the percentage of people who smoke is much lower than it was in the 1960s.

My father was a 4 pack-a-day smoker until the Surgeon General came out with his report in 1964. When my father read that report, he quit cold turkey immediately.

I'm old enough to remember quite a few jingles from cigarette ads on TV. They banned them in 1971. There was still lots of cigarette ads on poster, though, until about the 1990s.