Is the Pineal Cyst a Relevant Issue for Autism? The co-occurrence of pineal cyst and autism spectrum disorders

Objectives: Evaluate the simultaneous occurrence between pineal cysts and children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders in order to understand a possible relevance of pineal gland in ASD. Experimental procedures: Retrospective case-control study carried out on 161 children: 93 cases diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (38 with level 1 severity and 55 with level 2 severity) were compared with 68 controls (non-autistic patients). All participants had done a magnetic resonance image and were patients of the child psychiatry department. Results: This study shows that the prevalence of pineal cysts is higher in autistic children comparing with non-autistic children (84.6% vs. 15.4%, p=0.041). If the level of severity of the autism is discriminated into level 1 and 2, there is also a significant difference between these groups (15.4% vs. 84.6% vs. 0.0% in non-autistic, level 1 and level 2 ASD, respectively, p<0.001). The latter association was analysed calculating the odds of the presence of pineal cyst and having level 1 autism which was increased but with a wide variability (OR, 95% CI 13.75, [2.38-79.38]). Conclusion: This study shows a correlation between pineal cysts and autism spectrum disorders. There are differences when comparing the presence of pineal cysts between children with ASD and non-autistic children (p=0.041). This association is stronger in the children diagnosed with level 1 or mild ASD (p=0.001), since it is the group with the highest prevalence of pineal cysts (11.8%) much higher than the general population (ranges from 0.8% to 2.5%). The odds ratio calculated in this study reveals that patients with pineal cysts have 3 times higher association with mild ASD. All these findings help to corroborate the higher prevalence of pineal cysts in the autistic population when compared to the general population and suggest some relevance of pineal gland in autism