“It was interesting that these deficits were unique to social memory and did not result in impaired sociability – one of the key hallmark tasks used to assess social interactions in mouse models of ASD,” Annie Ciernia, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia said.
“This suggests that postnatal viral infections could be disrupting unique neural circuits important for social memory that are vulnerable during early postnatal development,” Ciernia continued.
“This paper has to be [understood] as proof that you need to vaccinate your kids, since infectious diseases can not only be fatal, but can also raise the risk of ASD among children who survive”, says co-author Manuel López Aranda, a neuroscientist at UCLA.
The combination of basic science and the clinically relevant data analysis of more than three million children is “a slam dunk,” said Tanjala Gipson, a paediatric neurologist at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital.