An analysis of 6.14 million maternal-child health records  has linked prescription medications to higher rates of Autism Spectrum Disorder in offspring. 

Sterol biosynthesis–inhibiting medications (SBIMs) inhibit the cholesterol synthesis pathway and are include antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, beta-blockers and statins; aripiprazole, atorvastatin, bupropion, buspirone, fluoxetine, haloperidol, metoprolol, nebivolol, pravastatin, propranolol, rosuvastatin, sertraline, simvastatin, cariprazine and trazodone. 

These include some of the most commonly prescribed medications in the United States, accounting for more than 400 million annual prescriptions. 

The records were from the Epic Cosmos database and include  nearly one-third of all U.S. births between 2014 and 2023. The authors correlated mothers prescribed at least one SBIM during pregnancy with a 1.47-fold higher risk of having a child diagnosed with ASD.  For each additional SBIM co-prescribed, there was a 1.33 times increased risk of ASD, reaching 2.33-fold risk when four or more SBIMs were prescribed simultaneously.


Cumulative Incidence of ASD by Any SBIM Exposure During Pregnancy

Among the 234,971 children diagnosed with ASD in the cohort, 15% had prenatal SBIM exposure and use of SBIMs during pregnancy also increased sharply during the analysis period, from 4.6% of pregnancies in 2014 to 16.8% in 2023. 

Because this is only epidemiological correlation, the results are only EXPLORATORY any more than vaccines causing autism, food coloring causing diabetes, or weedkillers causing cancer. If you see claims about causation, look for the money behind them.

The authors speculate that because cholesterol is essential for fetal development, especially for the  cholesterol-rich brain, and genetic disruptions in this pathway are known to cause severe developmental syndromes such as Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLOS), medications which might cross the placental barrier could interfere with this pathway. 

Citation: Eric S. Peeples, A. Jerrod Anzalone, Ran Dai, Elizabeth Reisher, Zeljka Korade&Karoly Mirnics,.'Sterol pathway disruption in pregnancy: a link to autism'. Mol Psychiatry (2026). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-026-03610-7