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A research project examining the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to rising autism prevalence was awarded a National Institute of Health grant.
Credit: Abhiram Juvvadi
A collaboration between the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine has been awarded a National Institutes of Health grant as part of a broader $50 million effort to fund 13 autism research projects.
The initiative, titled Genomic and Exposomic Factors in the Cause and Rise of Autism, will examine genetic and environmental factors that contribute to rising autism prevalence. The study will combine genetic information with a wide range of environmental data — including air and water quality as well as neighborhood conditions — to examine how multiple factors interact to influence autism risk.
CHOP Psychiatry professor Judith Miller will lead the study which is part of a larger nationwide research effort from the Department of Health and Human Services.
The joint three-year study between CHOP and Penn proposes creating an aggregate data pool by combining CHOP’s EHR clinical and biorepository data with Penn’s EHR data on pregnancy, maternal, and birth outcomes, along with research databases. CHOP’s electronic health record data includes a cohort of 104,405 children born between 2008 and 2017, of which about 4,000 children are diagnosed with autism.
Recently, Penn professor of Psychiatry David Mandell, criticized the Trump administration for “linking autism to the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy” and for its comments regarding leucovorin, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy suggested can be used to treat symptoms of autism in children.
In a previous statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Mandell said that the HHS leucovorin announcement was based on five small trials and that a robust, independent trial would be a better approach.
Mandell added that there was concern that the HHS “was going to funnel money to examine pet hypotheses, or to people who might be more likely to gather or interpret data in a way that supported some of Secretary Kennedy’s hypotheses.”
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