(This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays)

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) -Out-of-whack thyroid hormones during pregnancy in mothers with pre-pregnancy thyroid dysfunction may increase the child’s risk of autism, researchers found.

While adequately treated chronic thyroid dysfunction did not increase the odds of an autism diagnosis in offspring, ongoing imbalances across multiple trimesters did increase the risk, study leader Idan Menashe of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel said in a statement.

The study followed more than 51,000 births, including 4,409 in which mothers had abnormal thyroid hormone levels before or during pregnancy, or both.

As long as any existing thyroid dysfunction was adequately con

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