{"id":226550,"date":"2025-12-05T00:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/autistic-children-born-preterm-often-show-more-complex-needs-but-share-similar-genetic-background"},"modified":"2025-12-05T00:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:39:07","slug":"autistic-children-born-preterm-often-show-more-complex-needs-but-share-similar-genetic-background","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/autistic-children-born-preterm-often-show-more-complex-needs-but-share-similar-genetic-background","title":{"rendered":"Autistic children born preterm often show more complex needs\u2014but share similar genetic background"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/autistic-children-born-preterm-often-show-more-complex-needs-but-share-similar-genetic-background2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new study shows that children born preterm who are later diagnosed with autism often present with more extensive support needs and a higher number of co-occurring conditions than autistic children born at full term. Surprisingly, however, the researchers found no differences in genetic variants across the genome, nor in specific genes already linked to autism, between the groups\u2014a result that contradicted their initial hypothesis.<\/p>\n<p>The study was conducted at KIND (Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet) and <a href=\"https:\/\/genomemedicine.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s13073-025-01552-3\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in October 2025 in the journal Genome Medicine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe did not observe any genetic differences between preterm and full-term autistic children, which was unexpected. We initially thought that preterm children might show fewer of the genetic factors associated with autism, as their early birth can be viewed as an environmental factor,\u201d says Yali Zhang, doctoral student at Tammimies research group at KIND and first author of the study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study shows that children born preterm who are later diagnosed with autism often present with more extensive support needs and a higher number of co-occurring conditions than autistic children born at full term. Surprisingly, however, the researchers found no differences in genetic variants across the genome, nor in specific genes already linked to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}