Can being born premature increase the chances of an ASD?

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Hi everyone,

I want to know whether being born premature (for males) can increase the chances of having an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I was born 15 weeks premature and I had two small bleeds in my brain when I was born (Intraventricular Haemorrhage), I'm slower down the left hand side of my body, I have poor sight and now I believe that I have Asperger's, I have always had trouble interacting with people, starting conversations, obsessive interests etc.

My Aunt and Grandmother believe that I have Asperger's, is it hard to get diagnosed as an adult?

I am in the process of being referred to a psychiatrist for Social Anxiety/Generalised Anxiety Disorder, so could I talk to them about the possibility of myself having Asperger's?

I got diagnosed as an adult in the UK about 10 years ago. Speak to your GP about it and see what he/she says.

Not sure about if being born premature can cause it.

Definitely increases the chances! As for being diagnosed as an adult...it depends.
I was born 2 months premature because a virus (which dried up my amniotic fluid) that nearly killed me- I was immediately given continuous antibiotics which kept me in NICU) for four months until going home for the first time.

From at least one study, a major risk factor
The lower the birth weight = 5 times greater chance of classic autism in girls.

I was born a month premature, although I do know know exactly why. Most likely it had to do with my heart valve problem, perhaps they though that if I went to full term, I would have died from the broken valve?

As for weither or not being born premature has any effect on your chances of ASD, I have never read anywhere about any solid proof of a connection.

_________________
Ya, I'm weird like that...

Yes, it can increase the chances for two reasons. (And gender has nothing to do with the impact of prematurity, to my knowledge.)

Prematurity can trigger health events that damage the brain, such as the intraventricular haemorrhages that you experienced. If certain areas are damaged, you can have poor social skills, sensory processing issues, difficulty shifting attention, and other features common in autistic people.

In addition, the impact that an early brain injury has on development can amplify autistic traits. For example, a brain injury that, in an adult, would cause difficulty recognizing tone of voice but no other social issues - in a child, this difficulty with tone of voice will reduce access to information used to learn other social skills. They won't be able to use tone of voice to guess at the meaning of a facial expression they don't recognize (young children have poorer facial emotion reading than adults), or use it as a clue to learn how other people think, or so forth. So what would have been an isolated issue with one area can become a broader issue affected several related skills. (Just like an adult who becomes deaf can talk fine, but a child born deaf finds it very hard to learn to talk.)

In your case, since you have trouble with movement on the left side, this strongly suggests right hemisphere damage. (The right hemisphere moves the left side of the body and vice versa. It's weird.) Right hemisphere damage can affect the ability to process tone of voice and facial expressions, which would definitely result in autistic features. In particular, it's one of the major known causes of nonverbal learning disability, which overlaps with autism/AS quite a bit. (Do you find that verbal skills are easier for you than spatial reasoning? Did you get better marks in English than in math?)

There's another way that prematurity can affect autistic traits. Because a baby of that gestational age would normally be in the womb, a dark environment with consistent tactile sensation and muffled sounds, their brain is expecting that sort of sensory cues. So being in a hospital, in an incubator with lights on and beeping sounds and things attached to them and such is a very unnatural sensory environment, and can make the baby feel sensory overload. Because babies' brains are so flexible, the exposure to sensory overload can rewire their brain, making them more prone to sensory processing issues. Some hospitals are now starting to have darkened, noise-reduced environments for premature babies to lessen this effect, but when you were born, they would not have known about this issue.

I was born 14-16 weeks premature which caused me to have a physical disability I can't walk without aid but Asperger (Which I'm not sure I have.) I'm not sure.

Being born premature can cause lots of things.


I was born 5 days late, by the way.

I was born premature and cyanotic. I was born with several defects in addition to my autism. I personally believe though there was oxygen deprivation to my brain that caused or worsened my autism.

9 weeks premature for me, for what all it matters.

I think it's a coincidence, but premature birth can cause other disabilities besides ASD. Also, not all of us on the spectrum were premature, I was actually born right on time, even though the doctor was off by a few days. My birth weight was in the range for someone born on time, and had I been born later, my mom might have needed a C-section.

I was born premature. Appsrently i was given only a 5% survival rate. My ASD is mild but perhapswhen i was born plays a role as i was in the womb for less time.