AccScience Publishing / MI / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/MI025290061
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REVIEW ARTICLE

Prenatal maternal autoimmune disorders and the risk of developmental disorders

George Ayoub1*
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1 Department of Psychology, Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America
MI, 025290061 https://doi.org/10.36922/MI025290061
Received: 14 July 2025 | Revised: 14 August 2025 | Accepted: 1 September 2025 | Published online: 3 October 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Mothers with certain autoimmune disorders give birth to children who develop autism at over twice the rate as mothers without these disorders. While many maternal autoimmune disorders increase the risk of several types of mental disorders in offspring, lupus and Hashimoto’s disease are most pronounced, doubling the risk of autism. Thus, these two conditions may place a significant immune load on the developing fetus, presumably coinciding with critical periods in fetal nervous system development. This maternal immune activation may be further impacted by environmental stressors that, along with genetic mechanisms, further compromise fetal development. It is thus critically important for prenatal care to be multidisciplinary, particularly for women with autoimmune disorders. Managing the environmental oxidative stressors may help mitigate the increased risk due to autoimmune disorders and allow fetal development to proceed on schedule. Given that the environmental stressors such as malnutrition, infection, and pollution can adversely affect fetal development, implementing proactive strategies to address these factors during pregnancy, combined with improved early screening of children, would offer significant societal benefits. This review examines evidence for a link between maternal autoimmunity and considers mechanisms that may be in play to increase the propensity of autism development.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Autism
Maternal immune activation
Autoimmunity
Inflammation
Hashimoto’s disease
Lupus
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
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Microbes & Immunity, Electronic ISSN: 3029-2883 Print ISSN: 3041-0886, Published by AccScience Publishing
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