A recent study has shown that women who take prenatal vitamins early on in pregnancy may be at a lower risk of giving birth to a child with autism spectrum disorder.

The team of researchers, based out of the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, mothers who took the vitamins prenatally or during the first month of pregnancy were only half as likely to have a child with autism as those who didn't.

According to lead author Rebecca J. Schmidt, "Mothers of children with autism were significantly less likely than those of typically developing children to report having taken prenatal vitamins during the three months before and the first month of pregnancy".

The study also found that for women who began taking prenatal vitamins during or after the second month of pregnancy there was no effect on autism rates.

The researchers also found that women with a particular genetic makeup who did not take prenatal vitamins were at a risk as great as seven times higher of having a child with autism than that of women with more favorable genes who did report taking vitamins.

The study, which will be published in the Journal Epidemiology, collected data from approximately 700 California families with children ages 2-5, who had autism or typical development.