Pregnancy
Jiejin Qiu, who is six months pregnant with her first baby, poses underwater during a photo shoot at a local wedding photo studio in Shanghai September 5, 2014. Reuters Photographer Carlos Barria photographed a person born in each year China?s one child policy has been in existence; from a man born in 1979, to a baby born in 2014, and asked them if they would have like to have siblings. China, the world's most populous country with nearly 1.4 billion people, says the country's one-child policy has averted 400 million births since 1980, saving scarce food resources and helping to pull families out of poverty. Couples violating the policy have had to pay a fine, or in some cases have been forced to undergo abortions. But late last year, China said it would allow millions of families to have two children, part of a plan to raise fertility rates and ease the financial burden on a rapidly ageing population. Picture taken September 5, 2014. Reuters

The length of time between a woman's pregnancies was found to influence the risk of their children developing autism, experts warned. The quick succession of pregnancies of less than two years or waiting more than six years after giving birth was found to raise the risk of developing the condition two to three times higher.

The new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, concluded that it may be the depleted supplies of folic acid, a significant nutrient for healthy brain development, which prompted the development of autism on the scyounger sibling. Previous studies have already found that a higher risk of autism is linked to either very short pregnancy intervals or longer-than-usual intervals.

The current study reinforces the World Health Organisation's recommendation for women to wait at least two years after a child is born before attempting the next pregnancy, said Dr Lisa Croen, study author and director of the autism research programme of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, in a HealthDay report. However, there is still no explanation of how leaving a long gap between children increases the risk.

For the study, the researchers analysed the medical records of about 45,000 second-born children between 2000 and 2009 in Kaiser Permanente Northern California hospitals. The initial analysis shows that a pregnancy gap of less than six months or 6 years of longer interval carry the highest risk for children, with and without an older sibling with autism, to develop the condition.

Many researchers have already tried to analyse the effects of pregnancy gap on children. Some studies found that short intervals cause psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, Dr David Mendez, a neonatologist at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, told HealthDay.

More studies are required to better understand the impacts of gap between pregnancies to the child's health and upbringing, Mendez said. He added that avoiding short intervals between pregnancies would help parents to cope with the changes.

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