Higher lithium concentrations in drinking water among pregnant women carry significant possibilities of raising the risk of autism among children, a new study has found.
Researchers found that high lithium levels in the second and third quartiles were associated with a 24 to 26 percent higher risk of autism compared to the first quartile. The risk in the fourth quartile was 46 percent higher.
“Estimated maternal prenatal exposure to lithium from naturally occurring drinking water sources in Denmark was associated with an increased ASD risk in the offspring. This study suggests that naturally occurring lithium in drinking water may be a novel environmental risk factor for ASD development that requires further scrutiny,” the study found.
Lithium, a naturally occurring trace element, is known to have mood-stabilizing effects. The element has been linked to cardiac malformations among newborns as well as miscarriages.
Lithium Contaminated Water
Beate Ritz, the lead author of the study and a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, decided to look at potential links between lithium and autism risk after discovering that there was little research into how the element affects human brain development.“In the future, anthropogenic sources of lithium in water may become more widespread because of lithium battery use and disposal in landfills with the potential for groundwater contamination.”
Zeyan Liew, the first author of the study and an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale University School of Public Health, pointed out that earlier research done in Denmark had already shown that ingestion of lithium via drinking could affect the onset of adult-onset neuropsychiatric disorders.
The recent study also found that high lithium levels continued to pose a higher risk of autism diagnosis even when the data was divided up by subtypes of the disorder.
Autism in the US, Genetic Links
The JAMA study comes as autism rates among children have been rising in the United States, according to the latest data by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).In a study published last month, the CDC estimated that 1 in 36, or 2.8 percent, of 8-year-old children in the country are affected by autism. This is up from 1 in 44 in 2018 and 1 in 150 in 2002. Boys were found to be far more likely to develop autism than girls.
The study was conducted among 11 communities that are part of a CDC-funded program called the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. Another national estimate put autism rates among children between the ages of 3 and 17 at 2.9 percent.
In an October 2022 study published in the International Journal of Health Geographics, researchers from the University of Utah proposed that ancestry contributed to the increased risk of autism, especially where and when one’s grandparents and their children were born.
The nutritional access of paternal grandparents during their childhood was found to have a direct impact on health outcomes among grandkids.
