Maternal thyroid hormones play a critical role in fetal brain development, yet the impact of gestational thyroid imbalance on childhood neurodevelopment, particularly autism spectrum disorder (ASD), remains unclear. To investigate this relationship, the association between maternal thyroid dysfunction during pregnancy and ASD risk in offspring was examined in a cohort of 51,296 singleton births. The study showed that overall ASD incidence was comparable in children of mothers with normal and abnormal thyroid function.
Chronic hypothyroidism alone was not significantly linked to ASD risk (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 0.47), but combined chronic and gestational hypothyroidism was associated with a substantially higher risk (aHR 2.61). A trimester-dependent pattern was observed, where longer hypothyroid exposure corresponded to increasing ASD risk, with aHRs of 1.69, 2.39, and 3.25 for 1,…
