#5-97E. Prenatal Flu and Offspring Neuropsychiatric Risk: Unraveling Familial Confounding (JAMA Netw Open, 2026)

Does maternal influenza infection during pregnancy truly increase the long-term risk of neuropsychiatric disorders in children? In a binational birth cohort of over 2.7 million mother-child pairs from South Korea and Japan, initial population-level weighted analyses indicated a modest risk elevation, but this association attenuated to non-significance in sibling-comparison models, highlighting residual familial confounding. For clinicians, these findings provide crucial reassurance when counseling pregnant women with influenza, confirming that gestational flu itself is unlikely to be a direct driver of offspring neuropsychiatric outcomes.

Citation: Jaehyun Kong, Seohyun Hong, Hyesu Jo, et al. Maternal Influenza Infection During Pregnancy and Neuropsychiatric Disorders in Offspring. JAMA Network Open. 2026.

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