Elevated steroid hormones in the womb could lead to autism

A study found that mothers of children with autism had elevated levels of steroid hormones in the womb.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark have discovered that children who later develop autism are exposed to elevated levels of steroid hormones (for example testosterone, progesterone and cortisol) in the womb. The finding may help explain why autism is more common in males than females, but should not be used to screen for the condition.

Funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the results are published today in the journalMolecular Psychiatry.

The team, led by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and Dr Michael Lombardo in Cambridge and Professor Bent Nørgaard-Pedersen in Denmark, utilized approximately 19,500 amniotic fluid samples stored in a Danish biobank from individuals born between 1993-1999. Amniotic fluid surrounds the baby in the womb during pregnancy and is collected when some women choose to have an amniocentesis around 15-16 weeks of pregnancy. This coincides with a critical period for early brain development and sexual differentiation, and thus allows scientists access into this important window in fetal development. The researchers identified amniotic fluid samples from 128 males later diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition and matched these up with information from a central register of all psychiatric diagnoses in Denmark.

Within the amniotic fluid the researchers looked at 4 key 'sex steroid' hormones that are each synthesized, step-by-step from the preceding one, in the 'Δ4 sex steroid' pathway: progesterone, 17α-hydroxy-progesterone, androstenedione and testosterone. They also tested the steroid hormone cortisol that lies outside this pathway. The researchers found that levels of all steroid hormones were highly associated with each other and most importantly, that the autism group on average had higher levels of all steroid hormones, compared to a typically developing male comparison group.

Professor Baron-Cohen said: "This is one of the earliest non-genetic biomarkers that has been identified in children who go on to develop autism. We previously knew that elevated prenatal testosterone is associated with slower social and language development, better attention to detail, and more autistic traits. Now, for the first time, we have also shown that these steroid hormones are elevated in children clinically diagnosed with autism. Because some of these hormones are produced in much higher quantities in males than in females, this may help us explain why autism is more common in males."

He added: "These new results are particularly striking because they are found across all the subgroups on the autism spectrum, for the first time uniting those with Asperger Syndrome, classic autism, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not-Otherwise-Specified. We now want to test if the same finding is found in females with autism."

Dr Michael Lombardo said: "This result potentially has very important implications about the early biological mechanisms that alter brain development in autism and also pinpoints an important window in fetal development when such mechanisms exert their effects."

Steroid hormones are particularly important because they exert influence on the process of how instructions in the genetic code are translated into building proteins. The researchers believe that altering this process during periods when the building blocks for the brain are being laid down may be particularly important in explaining how genetic risk factors for autism get expressed.

Dr Lombardo adds: "Our discovery here meshes nicely with other recent findings that highlight the prenatal period around 15 weeks gestation as a key period when important genetic risk mechanisms for autism are working together to be expressed in the developing brain."

Professor Baron-Cohen said: "These results should not be taken as a reason to jump to steroid hormone blockers as a treatment as this could have unwanted side effects and may have little to no effect in changing the potentially permanent effects that fetal steroid hormones exert during the early foundational stages of brain development."

He cautioned further: "Nor should these results be taken as a promising prenatal screening test. There is considerable overlap between the groups and our findings showed differences found at an average group level, rather than at the level of accurately predicting diagnosis for individuals. The value of the new results lies in identifying key biological mechanisms during fetal development that could play important roles in atypical brain development in autism."

Read more here

Why Women Need More Sleep Than Men

This article discusses the differences that occur between men and women who get inadequate sleep.

Ever noticed how after a late night out with your man, you have a harder time the next day than he does? It's not all in your head. Thanks to different hormonal makeups, we suffer more emotionally and physically when we're short on zzzs.

"Poor sleep certainly had a more profound effect on women than on men," says Edward Suarez, Ph.D., an associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine and lead researcher of a studythat looked at the relationship between poor sleep and poor health. He found that for women, reduced sleep was associated with a significant increase in risk of heart disease and diabetes, as well as more stress, depression, anxiety, and anger. However, these associations were weaker or nonexistent for men.

What gives? Testosterone. Levels of this hormone rise after poor sleep in men, and "because it decreases insulin and increases muscle mass, testosterone has an anti-inflammatory effect, which kept men's stress hormones lower," he explains.

Unfortunately for us, women's hormones, especially progesterone, do not have that same stress-dampening effect. Estrogen is known to have an anti-inflammatory effect, so the decline in the hormone as we get older could contribute both to worse sleep and to feeling even crappier after a night spent tossing and turning.

And while you may have seen recent headlines proclaiming that women need more sleep than men, the truth is a lot more complicated, says Aric Prather, Ph.D., an assistant psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco and author of a larger 2013 study that confirmed Suarez's findings. "I don’t think there is any good evidence yet that women needmore sleep than men," Prather says. "The present data is more in support of the fact that women may be more susceptible to the negative effects of poor sleep quality."

In both studies, physiological stress was measured by looking at blood levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which rises in response to inflammation and is considered a better marker of stress than looking at cortisol levels alone. The volunteers were also asked to rate their sleep quality. 

In addition to overall snooze time, Suarez's study looked at four different aspects of "disturbed" sleep: how long it took subjects to fall asleep, how many times they woke in the night, how long it took them to fall asleep again, and if they awoke too early in the morning. Surprisingly, it wasn't just the total number of hours in the sack that made the difference. According to Suarez, the No. 1 factor correlated with an increase in CRP for women was taking more than 30 minutes to fall asleep when they first hit the sheets. This is a double-whammy for women, he says, who not only are we 20 percent more likely to suffer from insomnia than men but also suffer more ill effects from it.

Large epidemiological studies have found that women tend to rate their quality of sleep as worse than men even when their sleep is shown through objective measures to be better. "This raises the question of whether women may be more sensitive to sleep problems, which may have biological consequences, including elevations in inflammation," Suarez says.

Kelly Glazer Baron, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and director of the Behavioral Sleep Program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, adds that bad sleep can become a vicious cycle: Shoddy shut-eye boosts stress, which in turn causes insomnia for many people, leading to even more stress on top of what you experience every day.

But there are things women can do to mitigate these effects. "We can improve how we prevent disease over lifetime simply by making small improvements in our sleep," Suarez says. This is why it's important to promptly treat sleep problems, especially insomnia. Baron says that if your insomnia reaches the point where it is making it hard to function during the day, talk to your doctor about lifestyle modifications and other options. 

She also recommends establishing a regular fitness routine. "It’s been known for a long time that exercisers sleep better," she says, citing her recent studies showing that 16 weeks of aerobic exercise at moderate intensity four days a week helped women get at least seven hours of sleep a night and also improved their perception of the quality of their rest.

Finally, don't forget the recommendations from the National Sleep Foundation, Prather says (which you likely can recite in your sleep—or as you stare at the ceiling): Go to bed at the same time every day of the week, avoid heavy meals before bed, establish a relaxing bedtime routine, don't nap, and exercise daily.

Read more here

Does Cosleeping Contribute to Lower Testosterone Levels in Fathers? Evidence

A previous Chinese study footnoted in this article showed that fathers had lower T than single men and married, non-fathers.

This article is a fascinating addition to the role of testosterone in males and environmental influences.  

JR

Does Cosleeping Contribute to Lower Testosterone Levels in Fathers? Evidence from the Philippines

Lee T. Gettler, James J. McKenna,

 

Thomas W. McDade,

 

Sonny S. Agustin,

 

Christopher W. Kuzawa

Because cross-species evidence suggests that high testosterone (T) may interfere with paternal investment, the relationships between men's transition to parenting and changes in their T are of growing interest. Studies of human males suggest that fathers who provide childcare often have lower T than uninvolved fathers, but no studies to date have evaluated how nighttime sleep proximity between fathers and their offspring may affect T. Using data collected in 2005 and 2009 from a sample of men (n = 362; age 26.0 ± 0.3 years in 2009) residing in metropolitan Cebu, Philippines, we evaluated fathers' T based on whether they slept on the same surface as their children (same surface cosleepers), slept on a different surface but in the same room (roomsharers), or slept separately from their children (solitary sleepers). A large majority (92%) of fathers in this sample reported practicing same surface cosleeping. Compared to fathers who slept solitarily, same surface cosleeping fathers had significantly lower evening (PM) T and also showed a greater diurnal decline in T from waking to evening (both p<0 .05="" 4.5-year="" a="" among="" arrangements="" at="" baseline="" compared="" cosleepers="" decline="" did="" experienced="" fathers.="" fathers="" follow-up="" greater="" in="" longitudinal="" men="" not="" over="" p="" period="" pm="" predict="" same="" significantly="" sleeping="" solitary="" study="" t="" the="" these="" to="" were="" who="">0.2). These results are consistent with previous findings indicating that daytime father-child interaction contributes to lower T among fathers. Our findings specifically suggest that close sleep proximity between fathers and their offspring results in greater longitudinal decreases in T as men transition to fatherhood and lower PM T overall compared to solitary sleeping fathers.

Full article here