Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Ritual circumcision, a rite practiced by many cultures and religions, could increase the odds that boys will develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prior to the age of 10, claims new research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Undergoing the ritual, in which the foreskin or prepuce of the male penis is surgically removed, especially increased risk for infantile autism before the age of five, according to the results of a cohort study involving over 340,000 boys in Denmark from 1994 through 2013.
All of the subjects were born between 1994 and 2003 and followed through the age of nine, and during the course of the study, nearly 5,000 cases of ASD were diagnosed. The study discovered that, regardless of their cultural background, circumcised boys could be at greater risk of developing the condition.
“Our investigation was prompted by the combination of recent animal findings linking a single painful injury to lifelong deficits in stress response and a study showing a strong, positive correlation between a country’s neonatal male circumcision rate and its prevalence of ASD in boys,” lead investigator Morten Frisch, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology Research at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, explained in a statement.
Frisch, who is also affiliated with the Center for Sexology Research at Aalborg University, and co-author Jacob Simonsen also discovered that circumcision was linked to an increased risk of hyperactivity disorder among circumcised boys in non-Muslim families.
While these days, it is considered unacceptable medical practice to perform a circumcision without proper pain relief, none of the most common interventions used to reduce such pain is capable of completely eliminating it, the study authors said. Some boys, they add, will endure extremely painful circumcisions – especially those who are very young.
Painful experiences in neonates has previously been linked to long-term changes in pain perception in animal and human studies, the researchers explained. This characteristic is also frequently encountered in children who have been diagnosed with ASD.
“Possible mechanisms linking early life pain and stress to an increased risk of neurodevelopmental, behavioral or psychological problems in later life remain incompletely conceptualized,” Frisch said.
“Given the widespread practice of non-therapeutic circumcision in infancy and childhood around the world, our findings should prompt other researchers to examine the possibility that circumcision trauma in infancy or early childhood might carry an increased risk of serious neurodevelopmental and psychological consequences,” he added.
Some experts are urging caution with the findings, according to the Daily Mail.
Professor Jeremy Turk, an adolescent psychiatrist at Southwark Child & Adolescent Mental Health Neurodevelopmental Service, told the newspaper that while the findings of the study were “interesting,” they needed to be “considered carefully.”
“This is not a causal study, but instead compares data sets and looks for correlations. While this is a valid way of doing a study, it means that we must be careful about any implications,” he said. “For example, many cases of autism are missed until children are older and as there are relatively few cases of autism this could easily skew the data.”
“Furthermore, there are many potentially confounding variables which could explain raised ASD rates, which the authors do not explore or account for,” Turk continued. “Finally, I have some issues with the premise in that their speculations regarding early pain as a cause of autism are, to say the least, highly speculative.”
Dr Rosa Hoekstra, a lecturer in psychology at the Open University, agreed, calling the study “extremely speculative” and telling the Daily Mail that it “takes a registered autism diagnosis at face value, without considering cultural or social factors affecting the likelihood of an (early) autism diagnosis. Even in a high income country like Denmark not all children with autism are detected and given a suitable autism diagnosis at an early age.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
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