Abstract
Parents raising children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) usually carry on their daily life under tremendous stress, but limited empirical research has been devoted to this population. It is known that parents' health status directly impacts therapeutic outcome of ASD children. As an important regulator in cardiovascular, nervous and immune systems, nitric oxide (NO) levels haven't been reported in parents of ASD children yet. In this study, we measured urine nitrite and nitrate from 43 ASD parents (ASD-P), and 43 healthy adults in the same range of age (Control) who didn't have any ASD descendants. Comparison between the ASD-P and Control groups showed that , , and / were all significantly lower in the ASD-P group. Analysis on the interaction effect of sex and group indicated that urine of mothers in ASD-P was lower than that in females of the Control group, but no significant difference was observed between males in both groups. It is for the first time that urine nitric oxide metabolites (nitrite, nitrate) levels were precisely reported to differentiate parents of autistic children from other adults without ASD descendants. This phenomenon suggests that parents (especially mothers) of autistic children might have experienced more mental and physical stressors, which led to decreased NO levels during metabolism. Further investigations are necessary to uncover the etiology of low urine NO among parents of autistic children.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a severe neurological developmental disease, negatively impacting millions of children and their families worldwide [1]
In order to explore whether nitric oxide (NO) levels in both blood and urine samples share the similar trend, later on we collected blood specimens from 38 out of the 43 originally recruited parents of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children (ASD-P), as well as from another group of 40 healthy adults (S-Control) who didn’t have any autistic descendants or children with other psychological problems
We analyzed the levels of urine creatinine, nitrite and nitrate of parents of ASD children for the first time
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a severe neurological developmental disease, negatively impacting millions of children and their families worldwide [1]. Along with better diagnostic tools, more and more children have been identified with this disorder, with the prevalence about 1 out 100 in China [2]. Research has shown that participation of parents was critical for improvement of core ASD symptoms of these children, which was dependent on the health status of their parents [3]. Very limited empirical studies have focused on pathophysiological research of ASD children’ parents (ASD-P), though research on ASD children has been extensive. Due to financial strain, intense caregiving demands and other related stressors, these parents generally exhibited elevated levels of stress, anxiety and depression than the general public, which was strongly associated with the core symptoms and
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