iScience (Mar 2023)

Deciduous tooth biomarkers reveal atypical fetal inflammatory regulation in autism spectrum disorder

  • Dani Dumitriu,
  • Elena Baldwin,
  • Roozie J.J. Coenen,
  • Luke A. Hammond,
  • Darcy S. Peterka,
  • Lynne Heilbrun,
  • Richard E. Frye,
  • Raymond Palmer,
  • Hjalmar Nobel Norrman,
  • Anna Fridell,
  • Karl Lundin Remnelius,
  • Johan Isaksson,
  • Christine Austin,
  • Paul Curtin,
  • Sven Bölte,
  • Manish Arora

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 26, no. 3
p. 106247

Abstract

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Summary: Atypical regulation of inflammation has been proposed in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, measuring the temporal profile of fetal inflammation associated with future ASD diagnosis has not been possible. Here, we present a method to generate approximately daily profiles of prenatal and early childhood inflammation as measured by developmentally archived C-reactive protein (CRP) in incremental layers of deciduous tooth dentin. In our discovery population, a group of Swedish twins, we found heightened inflammation in the third trimester in children with future ASD diagnosis relative to controls (n = 66; 14 ASD cases; critical window: −90 to −50 days before birth). In our replication study, in the US, we observed a similar increase in CRP in ASD cases during the third trimester (n = 47; 23 ASD cases; −128 to −21 days before birth). Our results indicate that the third trimester is a critical period of atypical fetal inflammatory regulation in ASD.

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