alisyn: ever since the new autism numbers came out showing 1 in every 88 children have autism. what do you make of this study showing a mother s obesity could cause it? allison, we ve been looking very carefully what the effects on the mother are in terms of autism developing later. that seems to be the holy grail here. what women are exposed to or have children in the womb seems to lead to an increase. whether risk in the environment. this big study published in pediatrics today, found that looking at over 1,000 kids, there is 60% increased risk of autism or austism spectrum disorder in women that owe obese. 34ers m of the women in child bearing years are obese. there is increased risk of diabetes. increased risk of high blood pressure and whopping risk with obesity. alisyn: the problem with these findings we all know lots of moms who are thin who have autistic children. that s true.
increased screening of more kids. in fact they ended up increasing the screening to hispanics and african-american kids. we re screening more kids for it and broading the definition of the whole speck trump of spectrum of autism. jenna: you hear a statistic when 1 in 54 boys at that is important about the spectrum of autism. you could be highly functioning and have autism but. could you tell us more about the different levels? there is a whole range. there is aspergers. they have social awkwardness but language skills are fairly well. to severe austism there is language deficit and development tall deficit. there is a huge spectrum and we re identifying that spectrum a lot better. so that is part of it. we re screening more people. as they used to say there