Antenatal nutritional supplementation and autism spectrum disorders in the Stockholm youth cohort: population based cohort study.

Abstract in brief

• This study investigated whether taking multivitamins, iron, and folic acid during pregnancy could lower the risk of children developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially with intellectual disability, by analyzing data from over 273,000 mother-child pairs in Sweden.
• The results showed that mothers who used multivitamins had a lower likelihood of having a child with ASD and intellectual disability compared to those who didn’t, with consistent findings across different statistical methods, though specific nutrients like iron and folic acid alone did not show clear protective effects.
• Overall, the study suggests that prenatal multivitamin use might be linked to a decreased risk of certain types of autism with intellectual disabilities, highlighting the importance of maternal nutrition in understanding ASD development.