Pitocin and Autism - where is the link?

H

howardcoombs

Registered User
In a separate post, I saw this claim "there is a statistical link between pitocin in labour and autism"

I've tried to search to find any links for this but all I've been able to find is "might", "could" and similar fuzzy words sprinkled in a variety of opinion based articles. I've not been able to find a study to confirm this link.

Can anyone point me to a proper study regarding this issue.
 
No proven causation, though there is a statistical link (see, for example, excerpt from: Pitocin and the Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder http://imfar.confex.com/imfar/2010/webprogram/Paper7555.html "The percentage of children whose mothers were administered Pitocin during labor was significantly greater in the ASD group (67%) than in the three other groups (ADHD 31%, PSY 19%, COG 27%), and the rate for the general population (about 26%). Analysis using Pearson Chi-Square demonstrated a significant relationship between diagnosis and OT exposure.")

Lots of current ongoing research - will be interesting to see the results. I, for one, would not be surprised to hear that increasing pharmaceutical birth interventions lie behind the increase in ASDs.

But no, there is no "proper study" that proves causation (and a University of Utah study concludes no correlation). Let's wait and see...
 
Thank you very much for the quick response and links. I wanted to make sure I wasnt missing something obvious.
If there was a strong link I would have expected much more significant results given the wide use of pitocin in the world.
Lets wait and see, thank you again.
HC
 
I was the one who posted that on another thread. That there is a link doesn't mean there is causation, but it will be interesting to follow the research in the coming years...
 
Saying that there is a link between pitocin and autism, is not accurate: it does not mean if you have pitocin that your child is ore likely to have ASD; it is more likely to mean that child has genetic issues which result in the need for pitocin.

There's so much research going on about ASD, and pitocin is just not even in the top twenty list of what is being looked at.
 
HappyV, absolutely, "link" doesn't mean "cause". They are at this stage not able to piece together the link, and as you say it may be the other way around, but that still constitutes a link worthy of investigation. I'm also skeptical but I'm interested to follow the research in the coming years..
 
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