Autism: What’s Jaundice Got to do with it?

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Hi did anyone on here with autism have jaundice when born (if born full term)

http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2010/10/15 ... o-with-it/

I just read this and It seems to suggest that a baby born full term with jaundice is at a much higher risk . Also babys born in the winter.

I just thought it interesting as I was born in January the day after my due date, I know this as my mum always told the story of how I was due on my grandads birthday ,he promised her a stack of stuff if I was. I ended up born at 2am the next day The first thing I did wrong I guess . She would also regale us with the story of how I nearly died from jaundice and it was several days before she knew if I would live.

Another thing she used to be proud of was all the drinking an smoking she did when pregnant "and you turned out fine " she would say

She used to also repeatedly tell me the story of how if my sister (the daughter she always wanted ) had lived I would never have been born , but everyone told her , the best thing was to try again and that's how I came to be . It was great to hear every time she told it and made me
feel so wanted

I was born in the summer, on time, healthy weight and healthy everything except some trouble nursing due to Ankyloglossia (runs in the family), and my mom did not smoke and while pregnant she did not drink and abstained from non essential medications. There may be an association but that does not mean cause. I would love to dig into their statistics and break them down.

Too small of a sample to be statistically significant.

Also, correlation does not imply causation.

Wait for confirmation from at least one other peer-group study.

They got it backwards, if there's any connection at all.

You seriously think 35,000+ is a small sample?

Rh negativity is connected to both autism and schizophrenia but I don't have the patience right now to find the proper studies in the sea of vaccination-conspiracy idiots that turn up in Google.

My Aspie twins were born in winter and both had jaundice.

It just seems to fit quite well for me . You see my son was also born the same .Right on time with jaundice in the winter ( it was actually during the worst storm we had had in years ) and he exhibits the same traits, apart from he has more of a problem with language

I just remembered my dad saying that my uncle was jaundiced as a baby, and my uncle seemed very Aspie-like, even into his old age. Hmmm....maybe there is something to this theory. He was born in April though, not winter.

I know correlation doesn't equal causation and all that but it is an interesting article. I was born in winter (December) and had perinatal jaundice.

Full term, had perinatal jaundice along with a severe infection that left doubt as to whether I'd survive. I was, however, born in August.

I was also first born so apparently that doesn't reflect a greater risk due to jaundice? Did I read that correctly?

I had jaundice and I was born in Oct, although that doesnt make a difference. The sun is strong here year around so my mom just put me out in the sun a few days I was good.

That's only 4.9% of the entire study population. This translates into 730,000 total people in the study.

Global population is 6,973,738,433 as of 2011 census. Let's call it 7,000,000,000 as of today (a difference of only 0.4%).

730,000 is only 0.01% of the total global population.

36,000 is only 0.0005% of the total global population. Even 35,766 out of 6,973,738,433 people is still only 0.0005%.

I say again: That is too small of a sample to be statistically significant, especially when from 0.33 to 3.0% of the global population may be autistic!.

You may want to consider looking at these and similar statistics in a global context.

That's not how statistical significance works. You can often derive statistically accurate trends from smaller groups. Given the sheer number of "participants" this research should actually reflect a fairly high probability of accuracy. Certainly, running a second study to test the first study's outcome wouldn't be a bad idea, but saying that results derived from 35,766 participants is not statistically significant is like claiming that we don't have enough evidence to determine whether water is wet because we haven't managed to get every single person on Earth to take a bath under observation.

Being my mother's second child, born with jaundice in the fall, and a late recognition of ASD, I'll be interested in seeing if there actually is a correlation between the mentioned risk factors.

A study sample is a randomly selected subset of the population, assumed to represent the distribution present in the population the sample was drawn from.

It's rare that you actually get an opportunity to study the entire population. About the only studies that do that are national census data; and studies of restricted populations such as students at X school.