Toxic Heavy Metals and Autism Spectrum Disorder; Is There a Link???!!!

Abstract

Although the word “autism” was first used by researchers in 1940s as an expressive term of children who are suffering from social and or emotional problems, definitive etiology of autism has not been figured out yet. Till now, no single factor could be claimed to be the cause of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but rather, it is one of the disorders that result from the interplay between genetic susceptibility and exposure to environmental hazards [1]. Toxic heavy metals as mercury, aluminum, and lead represent potential environmental hazardous factors that might lead to the development of ASD [2,3].