Autism Linked to Overweight Mothers?

Could autism be linked with mothers’ obesity during pregnancy?

...women who were obese during pregnancy were about 67 percent more likely than normal-weight women to have autistic children. They also faced double the risk of having children with other developmental delays. On average, women face a 1 in 88 chance of having a child with autism; the results suggest that obesity during pregnancy would increase that to a 1 in 53 chance, the authors said.
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Since more than one-third of U.S. women of child-bearing age are obese, the results are potentially worrisome and add yet another incentive for maintaining a normal weight, said researcher Paula Krakowiak, a study co-author and scientist at the University of California, Davis.

The fraction of children diagnosed with autism has been rising in recent decades.  Almost certainly a large part of that increase has simply been a greater willingness of doctors to make the diagnosis, largely because of increased awareness, and parental pressure to diagnose and treat behavioral disorders.  A number of straws have been grasped at as explanation, most cruelly, the vaccine hypothesis, that the thimerosal (a mercury bearing preservative) in vaccines was the root cause of increased autism, which has been thoroughly discredited.

This study suggests that increased maternal weight increases the risk for autism.  There's no doubt that American weight has climbed in recent decades as well.  This may, in fact, be all that's needed to explain any increase in the above the increased diagnosis.  Sadly, it leaves parents of autistic children no one to sue.