What Causes Autism In Humans
Autism is a complex developmental disability that is found during the first 3 years of a human’s life. It is basically a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain. This further result in the disparateness in the affected person’s communication ability and social interaction skills.
Let us try to analyze symptoms of autism in humans. The factors are thought to be manifold and also are hard to find out. Instances are there that have revealed that autism arises as a result of toxic exposures and genetic disorders. However, most cases of autism are regarded to affect without any known cause. Therefore, this disease is also termed as idiopathic in medical terms. Some of the factors that are known so far to cause autism are pointed out as below:
1. Genetic or Hereditary: While answering to the question of causes of autism, researchers have always pointed their fingers to the genetic factors. Studies have shown that if the parents’ family has a medical history of autism, their child is more likely to develop autism spectrum disorder. It has also been revealed that if a family already has an autistic child, it is at greater risk of having more.
2. Prenatal Environment: A satisfactory answer reflecting to what causes autism also leads us to ponder on several pre natal risk factors. These risk factors include disparity of ages in between the parents, high diabetes, and use of psychiatric drug by the mother during conception. Among these, the age difference of the parents is considered the most primary factor for a child to develop autism.
3. Postnatal Environments: There are varieties of postnatal factors that contribute to the development of autism in a child. These include allergies; immune system or gastrointestinal abnormalities; and exposure to certain food materials, like gluten or casein products; vaccines, drugs; infections; or heavy metals. These factors, however are anecdotal and are yet to be supported by confirmed findings.
4. Brain Differences: Some researches have found a brain difference in between an autistic child and a normal child. An autistic child is more often found to possess a larger brain. Moreover, the information as received by these individuals is differently processed. It can be said that the brain of an autistic child is differently wired in comparison to that of a normal child. There is an ongoing research on this matter to find out more intriguing facts.
5. Refrigerated Mothers: Parental coldness especially that of a mother, might also contribute to the development of autism in a child. Although Dr Leo Kanner identified such a trait, further researches have revealed that it is just a misinterpretation. But still a link in between an early childhood trauma and development of autism in a child cannot be severed.
6. Lack of Vitamin D: This theory hypothesises that autism can develop because of deficiency of vitamin D in a child. However, this theory also has not been scientifically proven till date.