Urine Nitric Oxide Is Lower in Parents of Autistic Children

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 NO2-, NO3-, and NO2-/NO3- were all significantly lower in the ASD-P group. Analysis on the interaction effect of sex and group indicated that urine NO3- 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.