Kids born during COVID-19 pandemic don't have higher autism risk--study

No increased risk of autism seen in pandemic-era children Children born during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic—with or without exposure to maternal infections—do not seem to be at increased risk for developing autism, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open. CIDRAP

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"The scale of the COVID pandemic had pediatricians, researchers, and developmental scientists worried that we would see an uptick in autism rates. But reassuringly, we didn’t find any indication of such an increase in our study," said study author Dani Dumitriu, MD, PhD, of Columbia University in a press release from that institution. "There has been broad speculation about how the COVID generation is developing, and this study gives us the first glimmer of an answer with respect to autism risk.”

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