Seattle Health Blog

Two Swedish studies reported by the Vitamin D Council, providing support to the hypothesis of a link between autism and vitamin D deficiency, defended by psychiatrist John Cannell.

Mats Humble and his colleagues at the Karolinska Institute (Stockholm) measured levels of vitamin D in 117 adults with psychiatric diagnoses. All 10 of them diagnosed with autism had blood levels of vitamin D lower than other groups, including those with diagnoses of schizophrenia and depression.

The levels were 12 ng / ml on average, a level known to cause rickets in children and osteomalacia (a painful disease of the bones) in adults. This study is published in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

In another study, Elisbeth Fernelli and colleagues at various institutions in Sweden measured the levels of vitamin D in immigrant women of Somali origin about 6 years after they gave birth to a child who received a diagnosis of autism. Somali mothers had very low levels of vitamin D: less than 10 ng / ml. Those who had a child with autism tended to have lower levels. This study is published in Acta Paediatrics.

Autism, Dr. Cannell noted in Medical Hypotheses in 2008, is more common in regions where UVB rays have a lower penetration as those latitudes near the poles, the urban areas, urban areas with high pollution and high precipitation. Autism is more common in people with dark skin including severe maternal deficiency of vitamin D is particularly high. According to the researcher, the new “epidemic” of autism could be explained by lack of vitamin D especially favored by the instructions of the last years of avoiding exposure to sunlight.