Badawi N et al. (2006) Autism following a history of newborn encephalopathy: more than a coincidence? Dev Med Child Neurol 48: 85–89

Researchers have reported a possible link between newborn encephalopathy (NE) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) such as autism and Asperger's syndrome.

This population-based study in Western Australia enrolled 276 full-term infants with moderate to severe NE and 564 randomly selected full-term controls. Sociodemographic, IQ, behavioral, language and neurodevelopmental data on each participant were collected by questionnaires and medical records at enrollment, and by a series of tests at 3 years and 5 years of age. Participants who survived for at least 5 years were included in the subsequent analyses.

Children with NE were 5.9 times more likely to be diagnosed with an ASD than were controls—12/239 children with NE and 5/563 controls were diagnosed with an ASD. Children with NE and an ASD were more likely than controls to have a history of bleeding, trauma or infection in utero (odds ratio 4.7), and were also more likely to have had a birth defect diagnosed at 2 years of age (odds ratio 11.2).

The authors state that children with a history of NE should be considered to be at risk of experiencing an ASD, and should be followed up appropriately to enable early intervention if necessary. The association between NE and ASDs might be attributable to common risk factors between these conditions or a shared underlying defect in fetal neurodevelopment, or, alternatively, NE might cause or be the first sign of an ASD in newborn children.