Circumcision carried out before the age of five can double a child's risk of developing autism, according to new research.
The study of over 340,000 boys born in Denmark between 1994 and 2003 concluded that circumcision raised the chance of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) before the age of 10 by 46 per cent. When circumcision was carried out before the age of five, the risk doubled.
The study suggested that there is a link between the pain of the procedure - the surgical removal of the foreskin - and the development of ASD.
Professor Morten Frisch, of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, whose team carried out the research, said: Our investigation was prompted by the combination of recent animal findings linking a single painful injury to lifelong deficits in stress response and a study showing a strong, positive correlation between a countrys neonatal male circumcision rate and its prevalence of ASD in boys.
Given the widespread practice of non-therapeutic circumcision in infancy and childhood around the world, our findings should prompt other researchers to examine the possibility that circumcision trauma in infancy or early childhood might carry an increased risk of serious neurodevelopmental and psychological consequences.
Prof Frisch's findings, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, have been questioned by others in the medical community, and some religious groups.
Professor Jeremy Turk, a psychiatrist at Southwark Child & Adolescent Mental Health Neurodevelopmental Service, said, "I have some issues with the premise in that their speculations regarding early pain as a cause of autism are, to say the least, highly speculative."
Professor David Katz, chair of Milah UK, an organisation set up to protect the right of the Jewish community to carry out religious circumcision, said: "This report is far from convincing: correlation does not equal causation.
"There is a long history of attempts to link autistic spectrum disorders to unrelated practices, such as the measles/mumps/rubella association, which proved to be fraudulent."
