Early childhood atopy and autism risk

De profundis clamo ad te, domine

Regular readers will probably have heard something like this before so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself: "The presence of any atopic disease in early childhood increased the risk of developing ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder]... and ASD [autism spectrum disorder]... in later life".

So said Mu-Hong Chen and colleagues [1] with yet another 'big data' paper coming out of Taiwan.

There is little point in me turning this research into some sort of mega-post given that this topic has featured so heavily on this blog. In case you missed them, here are some of the relevant posts:

• Allergic and autoimmune diseases and autism (2012) (see here)
• Asthma increases risk of ADHD? (2013) (see here)
• Asthma as a risk factor for autism? (2014) (see here)
• Autism, ADHD and allergy: Taiwan and big data (again) (2014) (see here)

Lazy? Yes, I am being a bit lazy in this post by just supplying older links but what more can I say apart from that there seems to be a complicated relationship between immune function and behaviour. Oh, and other research from this group might also be worthwhile looking at as per studies linking epilepsy and atopic dermatitis [2] and major depression and/or bipolar disorder and asthma [3] knowing about the various comorbidity relationships with autism (see here and see here).

And here is some lazy music to accompany my lazy post...

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[1] Chen MH. et al. Is atopy in early childhood a risk factor for ADHD and ASD? A longitudinal study. J Psychosom Res. 2014 Oct;77(4):316-21.

[2] Chen MH. et al. Risk of epilepsy among patients with atopic dermatitis: a nationwide longitudinal study. Epilepsia. 2014 Aug;55(8):1307-12.

[3] Chen MH. et al. Higher risk of developing major depression and bipolar disorder in later life among adolescents with asthma: a nationwide prospective study. J Psychiatr Res. 2014 Feb;49:25-30.

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Chen MH, Su TP, Chen YS, Hsu JW, Huang KL, Chang WH, Chen TJ, Pan TL, & Bai YM (2014). Is atopy in early childhood a risk factor for ADHD and ASD? A longitudinal study. Journal of psychosomatic research, 77 (4), 316-21 PMID: 25280829