Disrupted immunity in fetal brain is linked to neurodevelopmental disorders

New research findings in mice may help explain how viral infection during pregnancy raises the risk of autism and schizophrenia in their offspring. The study may explain, among other things, how the mother’s infection with the cytomegalovirus (CMV) during pregnancy, which affects her own and her fetus’s immune system, increases the risk that her offspring will develop autism or schizophrenia, sometimes years later.