"Children of Both Young And Old Parents Share Risk For Certain Neurodevelopment Disorders"
Younger parental age is significantly associated with risk for ADHD and Tourette’s, whereas older parental age is associated with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Result of the study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, reports that parental age is linked to the risk for the development of neuropsychiatric disorders in children, including autism spectrum disorder; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; obsessive-compulsive disorder; and Tourette’s disorder/chronic tic disorder. “For the first time in a population-based sample, our research shows that parental age is connected to differential risks for pediatric-onset psychiatric disorders,” said study author Magdalena Janecka, PhD, post-doctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. According to Dorothy Grice, MD, professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and lead author of the study, “We used a very large national cohort of 1.4 million children for this study and it allowed us more precision in examining the complex relationships between parental age and offspring risk for mental health conditions. Our study results will help guide the search for the specific mechanisms that affect risk for childhood psychiatric disorders.”
— Magdalena Janecka, PhD, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
— Dorothy Grice, MD, Director, OCD and Related Disorders, Clinical Research Program, Associate Director, Tics and Tourette’s Clinical Research Program, Division of Tics, OCD and Related Disorders, Professor, Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Additional coverage: Science Daily