According to a study, the risk of having a baby with autism can increase remarkably if you have a fever during your pregnancy, especially during the second trimester.

The study was published this week by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers observed children in Norway between 1999 and 2009, altogether over 95 000 children were observed. Among the group of mothers who had fevers during their pregnancies (15,700) 583 cases of autism was identified.

According to the results, if a woman has a fever anywhere over 37.2 C or 99 F, risk fo the child being born with autism increases 34% and even higher (40%) if the fever occurred during the second trimester. In case of women who suffered from more fevers after the twelfth week of pregnancy, the chances of autism increased a whopping 300% and more.

Based on observations, women who took ibuprofen for the fever didn't give birth to any children with autism. However, the sample size for them was way too low to allow the researchers draw any real conclusions here.

On average, roughly 1 in 68 children are born with some kind of autism.