{"id":635969,"date":"2026-10-20T05:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T05:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/635969\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T05:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T05:26:09","slug":"covid-19-and-influenza-effects-in-pregnancy-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/635969\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 and influenza effects in pregnancy; and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maternal infection: A new <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1001\/jamanetworkopen.2026.37902\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study<\/a> found only a modest association between having influenza during pregnancy and having a child with a neuropsychiatric condition, such as autism. The analysis used two cohorts with more than 2.7 million mother\u2013child pairs, including more than 47,000 children exposed to maternal infection. A sibling-comparison assessment weakened the link to the point of not being statistically significant, suggesting that familial factors play a larger role than maternal infection. Another recent <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1097\/INF.0000000000005436\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">paper<\/a> reported that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy does not increase the risk of neurodevelopmental conditions in children. The Transmitter has previously reported on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/spectrum\/the-link-between-maternal-infection-and-autism-explained\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">slight increase in autism likelihood<\/a> observed with maternal infection.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Autism research spotted this week:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPreserved intrinsic neural timescale organization with hierarchical variation in autism spectrum disorder\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/cercor\/bhag121\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Cerebral Cortex<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cHyperfunction of PSD-95 leads to hyperexcitability and cognitive abnormalities in MEF2C haploinsufficiency\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.2606341123\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cDisparities in autism spectrum disorder and perinatal risk factors\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1001\/jamanetworkopen.2026.37174\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">JAMA Network Open<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cA massively parallel reporter assay of MECP2 cis-regulatory elements reveals genetic candidates for male-biased autism\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.ajhg.2026.09.011\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">American Journal of Human Genetics<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cThe genetic orchestra of autism and its intersections with epilepsy, intellectual disability, and ADHD\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.biopsych.2026.10.003\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Biological Psychiatry<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cSystematic evaluation of incomplete penetrance in 4,325 rare disease families reveals divergent transcriptional networks in CHD8 pathology\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.64898\/2026.10.05.26364218\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">medRxiv<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cCharacterizing autism phenotype onset in the electronic health records to enable age-specific screening\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/aur.70378\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Autism Research<\/a><br \/>\n\u201cHuman-specific CCG-repeat insertion in the RBFOX1 promoter implicated in autism and speech enhances EGR1-responsive activity\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.64898\/2026.04.21.719679\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">bioRxiv<\/a><br \/>See also: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/spectrum\/birdsong-related-dna-sequences-tied-to-autism-linked-genes\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Birdsong-related DNA sequences tied to autism-linked genes<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maternal infection: A new study found only a modest association between having influenza during pregnancy and having a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-635969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}