Scientists have found a way to accurately determine the likelihood that a child will develop autism. In fact, nearly one in five children with autism develops the disorder because the mother’s immune system attacks the child’s brain in the womb.
Autism is a developmental disorder of a biological nature. It cannot be contracted or cured. A person is born with this developmental disorder, lives with it, and lives with it into old age. It cannot be cured, at least not yet.
Researchers at the University of California and Stanford University have developed a program that can detect antibodies in a woman’s blood that are responsible for attacking the fetus. Thanks to this test, it is possible to predict the risk of developing autism with almost 100% accuracy.
The study examined plasma from 450 mothers whose children were diagnosed with autism and 342 mothers whose children were born without autism. The results were used to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. This is a diagnostic method for detecting materials in a solution using special antibodies embedded in the wall of a container.
Scientists looked for eight proteins that are thought to cause the mother’s immune response, which affects the developing nervous system of her fetus. Previously, it was thought that only immunity, not antibodies and leukocytes, could do this. Now it has become clear that maternal antibodies can also affect the developing brain of the embryo.
In 2019, a scientific paper was published by University of California immunologists Karen Jones and Judy Van de Water that showed the process by which maternal antibodies can affect key proteins in fetal neurons, leading to an increase in maternal antibodies that then attack the child’s nervous system. In this study, scientists used machine learning to assess the impact of combinations of antibodies associated with developmental indicators.
The analysis they developed indicated the presence of antibody combinations that could cause autism with 100% accuracy. Although the diagnostic tool created from this analysis cannot predict the future development of autism with absolute accuracy, it does provide an understanding of existing risks. For example, if a mother has certain antibodies, her chances of giving birth to a child with autism increase by a factor of 31, Van de Water said.