A quarterly publication of the Autism Research Institute
Summer 2025 | Number 3, Volume 39
A multinational study suggests that parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may have an increased risk of dementia.
Zheng Chang and colleagues used Swedish registers to explore the risk of dementia in relatives of individuals with ASD. They found that these individuals were at increased odds of developing dementia, with the incidence rate being highest for parents (0.6 cases per 1,000 people per year, vs. 0.47 for parents of nonautistic individuals) and lower for grandparents and aunts or uncles.
“The same pattern of results was observed for Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia,” they say. “The results therefore indicate that autism and dementia may be underpinned by an overlapping set of familial factors.”
In addition, the researchers found that the risk of dementia was stronger for mothers of individuals with ASD than for fathers. They detected only a small difference in risk when they compared data for parents of children with and without intellectual disability.
The researchers caution that it is not known whether the increased risk of dementia in parents of individuals with ASD stems from genetic factors or a shared environment. They note, for instance, that the elevated rates of stress and depression seen in autistic individuals and family members could play a role. “However,” they say, “it is worth highlighting that the familial association between autism and dementia was stronger in families where two or more individuals had received a diagnosis of autism. Autism in such a context is more likely to be linked with an inherited genetic etiology, and consequently, this result could be indicative of shared genetic influences between autism and dementia.”
The researchers conclude, “[O]ur study provides some of the first evidence to suggest that autism and dementia co-aggregate within families. This lends support to the hypothesis that these conditions are underpinned by shared genetic factors, thus indicating that the genetics of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions may be linked.”
“Association between autism and dementia across generations: evidence from a family study of the Swedish population,” Zheng Chang, Honghui Yao, Shihua Sun, Le Zhang, Shengxin Liu, Isabell Brikell, Brian M. D’Onofrio, Henrik Larsson, Paul Lichtenstein, Ralf Kuja-Halkola, Sara Hägg, Francesca Happé, and Mark J. Taylor, Molecular Psychiatry, May 14, 2025. Address: Mark Taylor, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, [email protected].
