Comment by code51 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by code51 | Hacker News Reader

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I wasn't trying to argue against. Just trying to understand better.

1. Yes, Somalis in Sweden have very low D. That is quite obvious [from Table 1] after winter.

2. Yes, Somali children born in Sweden have higher rate (according to this study: 17 in 2437 [0.7%] for Somali background, 484 in 250565 [0.19%] for non-Somali): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2008....

However we should also consider the effect of other compounding factors about parents coming from Somali.

Here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-017-3232-z

"Results lend support to previous studies that found higher rates of ASD intellectual disability in children of immigrants from low human resource index countries compared to other groups."

coming from Somali also means coming from a low human resource index country. all kinds of air/water pollutants and chemicals/pesticides might be at play -together with- vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D effect itself is hard to isolate from just this. Further studies need additional data about these other factors (air pollution, exposed chemicals etc)

>"Results lend support to previous studies that found higher rates of ASD intellectual disability in children of immigrants from low human resource index countries compared to other groups."

>coming from Somali also means coming from a low human resource index country. all kinds of air/water pollutants and chemicals/pesticides might be at play -together with- vitamin D deficiency.

>Vitamin D effect itself is hard to isolate from just this.

If anything, your link confirms vitamin D theory even more :) What is the most common trait for all these low human resource index countries? They are closer to equator, i.e darker skin of the population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

It is very well established epidemiological fact that darker skin immigrants have noticeably lower vitamin D in higher altitudes (i.e where the higher developed countries are that they immigrate into).

If by "theory" you mean "darker skin in higher altitudes -> low vitamin D", I don't have anything against that.

If by "theory" you mean "low vitamin D -> autism", you're reading science wrong (by only using correlation when reasoning about it). You have to control for other factors in Somali population. That's how you do proper research. In its current form, as the researchers themselves point out, this says that a future study is needed.

Let me repeat: you might be entirely right but "this correlation supports the theory better" is not scientific evidence. It's just a hint to direct research.

As I said, if they find Swedish mothers with really low vitamin D and compare with Swedish mothers with high vitamin D, that would say a lot more.

I'm starting to think a study focusing on Swedish mothers with really low D (similar to Somali mothers) with Swedish mothers with high D would solve all the mystery here.

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