by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

A large new study suggests that moms who get a fever during pregnancy, especially in the second trimester, may be at a slightly increased risk of having a child who is later diagnosed with autism.
But don?t freak out if you happen to get a fever while pregnant. The study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, only shows an association between fever in pregnancy and autism, not that one thing causes the other. Fever in pregnancy is pretty common and most children born to moms who have a fever while pregnant do not develop autism. (Even so, because fever can be dangerous during pregnancy for other reasons, call your healthcare provider if you get one).
What?s interesting about the study is that it adds weight to a theory that infection during pregnancy may, in some cases, trigger an immune response in the mother that affects babies? brain development. Although more research is needed, the study moves scientists one step closer to figuring out how autism might be prevented.  
For the study, researchers at Columbia University analyzed records on almost 100,000 children born in Norway between 1999 and 2009. Of those, almost 16,000 children were born to moms who reported getting one or more fevers while pregnant. Close to 600 of those children (less than 4 percent) were later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
While the risk of having a child with autism increased across the board for women who reported a fever whil...