ABSTRACT

Objectives:

It has been suggested that the birth season, vitamin D deficiency and maternal infections play a role in the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Although there are inconsistencies in the available data, studies examining the relationship between ASD and the birth season are limited in our country. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between ASD and the birth season.

Materials and Methods:

The study sample consisted of 1,523 cases between the ages of 0-18 who were diagnosed with ASD who applied to the Ondokuz Mayıs University (OMU) Child Psychiatry outpatient clinic between January 2006 and October 2020. The patients were screened retrospectively with the Nucleus® Outpatient Clinic system. Information on the birth date, first application date, application diagnosis, total number of applications, age of diagnosis and gender were obtained from the system. Data were analyzed with SPSS v22.0.

Results:

A total of 4,001 applications diagnosed with ASD to the OMU Child Psychiatry outpatient clinic between 2006 and 2020 were found to belong to 1,523 individual patients. The mean age at first admission to the outpatient clinic was determined as 72.9 months. The most frequent first application was at 37 months. Of the 1,523 patients who applied in total, 75.3% (n=1,147) were male and 24.7% (n=376) were female. Considering the number of applications by years, the linear increase in the number of applications between 2006 and 2015 draws attention. When the birth seasons were analyzed, it was observed that the autumn births were statistically significantly higher (χ²: 19.763, p=0.001).

Conclusion:

In our study, a significant relationship was found between ASD and the birth season. In order to compare parturition seasonality, more comprehensive studies are needed to examine other confounding factors such as viral infections, vitamin D level, and maternal metabolic status in larger data sets.