A new study found that babies born via caesarean section are not at greater risk of developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The study has been published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Autism is a neurobehavioral disorder that includes impairment in social interaction and also covers a large spectrum of symptoms, skills and levels of impairment. Previous studies have linked ASD with the C-sections, but the latest study had renounced it and debunked its link.

The study was performed at Irish Center for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research, Cork, Ireland. The researchers re-examined the data that led to the belief that C-section increases the risk of autism by 21% and also if the siblings of autistic children were autistic.

They also studied that the delivery mode of more than 13400 pairs of siblings out of which one was autistic and found no link between C-section and autism.

"The overall risk of autism spectrum disorder is very small and this most recent work suggests that most, if not all, the risk is not [due to] the cesarean section at all", according to Louise Kenny, one of the lead authors of both studies and an obstetrician and gynecologist at Cork University Maternity Hospital in Ireland.

By Lizitha