Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! 

Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! Credit | Fotolia
Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! Credit | Fotolia

United States: Autism as experts stated has remained a mystery in the scientific community for decades, and now researchers think a bad cold or flu during pregnancy could be the leading factor. 

They have demonstrated that if the mother’s immune system is ramped up due to a viral infection, this could impair the development of the baby’s growing brain

More about the news 

According to the team from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, the finding is in cognizance of the fact that autism is more prevalent in boys than girls. 

How was the research conducted? 

Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! Credit | Adobe Stock
Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! Credit | Adobe Stock

The team of scientists artificially recreated and simulated a Viral infection in mice and followed up on how the pregnant woman’s immune system responded to the common cold or flu virus, which is called maternal immune activation (MIA). 

MIA is switched on when the immune system escalates, elevating cytokines and chemokines that can pass through the placenta and the baby’s developing blood-brain barrier. 

Detailed description 

According to Daily Mail reports, Chemokines, on the other hand, help combat the flu by recruiting other immune cells in its vicinity and taking along cytokines with them. 

Cytokines are small immune cells that destroy dangerous pathogens by calling for help with the assistance of fever, runny nose, and body aches. 

Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! Credit | Getty Images
Shocking: Cold During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk! Credit | Getty Images

Since the brain of a fetus is very sensitive to signals in the womb, this reaction results to wide may lead to behavioral problems like autism spectrum disorder. 

Irene Sanchez Martin, who is a postdoctoral student at CSHL, said in her recent superior experiment with mice, she noted that there was a delay in brain development in the embryo whenever the mother was ailing from a virus

Sanchez Martin continued with the effects of prenatal inflammation resulting from the cold or flu on the fetal brain. 

“The difference in my work is that I check what happened to the fetus 24 hours after exposure to maternal inflammation rather than analyzing the behaviors of the offspring as adults,” Martin said.