WIKIMEDIA, MIRMILLONCompared to boys without autism, males with the developmental disorder may have been exposed to higher levels of testosterone, cortisol, and other hormones in the amniotic fluid that surrounded them in their mother’s womb, according to a team of European researchers.
The scientists compared hormone concentrations in amniotic fluid samples from 128 boys with autism that were born between 1993 and 1999 in Denmark, which keeps comprehensive records and biological samples from every citizen, to samples that were collected from 217 Danish boys who did not have the developmental disorder. The samples collected from the mothers of the boys that were later diagnosed with autism tended to contain higher levels of testosterone, three other sex steroids (progesterone, 17α-hydroxy-progesterone, androstenedione), and the stress hormone cortisol. “In the womb, boys produce about twice as much testosterone as girls, but compared with typical boys, the autism group has even higher levels,” Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University and lead author on the new Molecular ...
