Hyeong-Moo Shin
Baylor University, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is diagnosed in more children each year, and researchers are still sorting out which environmental exposures during pregnancy contribute. One promising lead runs through the thyroid: abnormal maternal thyroid function in pregnancy has been linked to higher risk of autism and other neurodevelopmental problems in children.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
autism spectrum disorder
prenatal exposure
lithium
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Measure lithium in urine samples banked during pregnancy from MARBLES cohort women whose children received a final diagnostic outcome, and test whether higher prenatal lithium exposure is associated with child autism spectrum disorder.
- Test whether prenatal lithium exposure is associated with maternal thyroid dysfunction, the proposed intermediate step, in the same MARBLES pregnancies with measured urinary lithium.
- Reconstruct prenatal residential lithium exposure for 500 cases and 500 controls in the CHARGE case-control study by combining national lithium databases with geocoded residential histories and drinking-water source data, then retest the lithium-thyroid-ASD hypotheses.
- Apply mediation analysis to evaluate maternal thyroid dysfunction as a mediator between lithium and ASD, and mixture modeling to assess how co-occurring chemical exposures affect thyroid function and autism risk.
- Identify critical windows during pregnancy when lithium exposure most strongly relates to thyroid dysfunction or child autism risk, using repeated exposure measures across gestation.
More about the research
Lithium is a plausible culprit because it blocks the thyroid's uptake of iodine, concentrates in the thyroid gland, and is known to be toxic to nerve cells. It is not only a prescribed mood stabilizer: more than 56% of U.S. groundwater samples exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's health advisory level for lithium, and standard water treatment does not remove it.
Why it matters
Lithium reaches pregnant women both as medication and through drinking water that treatment plants do not clean of it. If prenatal lithium exposure disrupts maternal thyroid function and thereby raises autism risk, the finding would support concrete actions: water-treatment and advisory decisions, closer thyroid monitoring in pregnancy, and prenatal thyroid treatment. Because lithium exposure is modifiable, results could inform prevention strategies for families and public health agencies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Abraham Reichenberg
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The school
Baylor University: 5 labs on PI Pages, $135M a year on research, 280 research doctorates a year.
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