Maternal Cholesterol and Autism Spectrum Disorder

To our knowledge, there is no information on cholesterol and other sterol metabolism in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We thus propose to begin testing our hypothesis with a characterization of sterols and sterol-related genes in mothers of children with ASD and their association with ASD severity in their children. This is an initial pilot and feasibility study to future large-scale prospective studies of the risk for autism in relation to maternal sterol metabolism during pregnancy where we could measure cholesterol during pregnancy in real time.