A recent, large-scale study showed that in about 10 percent of mothers, there are antibodies in their bloodstream that react with the proteins in the brains of their infants. Published in Molecular Psychology, the research suggests that the blood-barrier in adult women prevents them from being harmed by these antibodies, but that same filter in the infants is not sufficiently developed. This, the study suggests, allows antibodies that are potential harmful to the brain of the infant to pass into the brains of the baby’s, possibly predisposing them to autism. Something similar may be occurring in mother’s with autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease. In one Danish study of about 700,000 births over a decade, the researchers found that a mother’s rheumatoid arthritis increased a child’s risk of autism by 80 percent, and celiac disease increased a child’s risk of autism by an astonishing 350 percent.
In one study, the relation of genes regulating immune system expression were studied in relation to the genesis of autism:
“Several lines of evidence, well discussed in Torrente et al’s article, would support an autoimmune basis for autism. Those include reports of association of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes with autism. The strongest associations between MHC genes and autism involve the null allele of complement C4B within the class III region, the extended haplotype B4-S30-D4R, and the third hypervariable region of HLA-DR 1. These are all known to predispose to autoimmunity. There is also increased prevalence of autoimmune disorders in families of autistic children and two reports of circulating autoantibodies to brain components. Animal models are also revealing: several different strains of inbred mice with spontaneously occurring autoimmunity present with early neurobehavior abnormalities, which can be reversed by early treatment with cyclophosphamide.”
