Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0025362 (mental retardation)
 15,878 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Gualtieri and Hicks (1985) proposed that male vulnerability for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs) was partially due to intrauterine immune attack of the fetus. One group of mothers with heightened immunoreactivity might be women with immune disorder. This was tested within an epidemiological sample of 17,283 mother/child pairs. Maternal immune disorders considered were ulcerative colitis or asthma. NDs in the child included: cerebral palsy, mental retardation, seizures, articulation disorder, reading, or arithmetic disability, verbal or performance aptitude deficits, and attention deficit disorder. Unlike prior studies, we controlled for demographic perinatal variables that might confound interpretation of the data. Results indicated that immune dysfunction in the mother, be it autoimmune (ulcerative colitis) or defensive (asthma) was not associated with an increased incidence of any NDs in the offspring, but mothers with ulcerative colitis did have a disproportionate number of offspring who were non-right handed. Few variables discriminated between the children of ulcerative colitis mothers who became right handed when compared to those who did not. We suggest that a) only certain maternal autoimmune disorders such as systemic lupus erythematosus (but not ulcerative colitis or asthma) elevate the risk of intrauterine immune attack and b) the elevated rate of non-right handed offspring among ulcerative colitis mothers was not an instance of immune attack but instead represents some kind of genetic association.
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PMID:A test of the immunoreactive theory for the origin of neurodevelopmental disorders in the offspring of women with immune disorder. 753 15

Hormonal imbalances in utero may render males more vulnerable to neurodevelopmental disorder (ND) than females. Since hormonal activity can be influenced by photoperiod, the relationship between season of conception and incidence of ND in offspring was examined within 11,578 mother/child pairs. Fall conception significantly elevated the odds for mental retardation, reading, arithmetic disability, or performance aptitude deficits (but not seizures, articulation disorder, cerebral palsy, or verbal aptitude deficits), and decreased the odds for reading talent (even when socioeconomic class, prenatal visits, infections, fever, vomiting, edema, anemia, and weight loss were covaried). Since the seasonality effect was not stronger in males, and was not specific to those NDs caused by left hemisphere dysfunction, the predictions of Geschwind and Galaburda (1985a, 1985b, 1985c) were not confirmed.
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PMID:Fall conception increases the risk of neurodevelopmental disorder in offspring. 783 99

This paper is the first large-scale attempt to test Geschwind and Galaburda's (1985a, 1985b, 1985c) hypothesis that there should be a four-way association among neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs), special talents, non-right handedness, and immune disorders. In a sample of 11,578 children, several two-way associations were found, but not those most strongly predicted by the theory. For example, non-right handedness was not associated with NDs considered to be secondary to left hemisphere dysfunction (e.g., articulation disorder, reading disability, verbal aptitude deficits). Instead, non-right handedness was associated with NDs that involve generalized brain damage (e.g. cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and seizures). One immune disorder (asthma) was associated with one ND (attention deficit disorder); immune disorder was not associated with non-right handedness. Less than 1% of this sample manifested the co-occurrence of any three or four of these markers. In sum, there was little evidence in support of the syndrome suggested by Geschwind and Galaburda (1985a, 1985b, 1985c).
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PMID:Is there really a syndrome involving the co-occurrence of neurodevelopmental disorder talent, non-right handedness and immune disorder among children? 853 78