A comparison of obstetric and neonatal complications between children with autistic disorder and their siblings

Sixty-one children had a diagnosis of autistic disorder according to the DSM3-R criteria in a population based study of mentally retarded children between the ages of 5 and 19 years in the Aberdeen city area of Scotland. Obstetric case records were traced for 36 out of these 61 autistic children. The obstetric case records of siblings of 30 of these autistic children were also traced. Modified versions of Prechtl's obstetric optimality scale along with that of Parnas were used to score pre-, peri- and neonatal obsteric complications in the autistic group and their normal sibling controls. A Spearman's correlation coefficient test between the scores of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) and the Obstetric and Neonatal Complication (ONC) scores of all autistic children did not reveal any significant correlation. However, among the 20 severe autistic children, Spearman's test showed significant correlation between the scores of CARS and some ONC scores. Overall, no statistically significant difference between the autistic children and their siblings in the scores of obstetric optimality was detected by using the Wilcoxon test.