[The Autism Spectrum Disorder Cohort-the sub-cohort of China National Birth Cohort].

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a representative disease of children's neurodevelopmental disorders, brings huge pressure and financial burden to families and society. It is of great significance to explore its etiology and pathogenesis. Therefore, we established an ASD Cohort based on the existing China National Birth Cohort (CNBC), which applied parallel design to recruit and follow up families who achieved pregnancy after receiving assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and families with spontaneous conception. The main aims of this study are to compare the incidence of ASD among children born after ART with those born under spontaneous pregnancy, and to evaluate the impact of ART on the neurobehavioral development of offspring. Additionally, with a variety of clinical and behavioral related information collected during pregnancy and at early life of offspring, we are able to investigate the risk factors associated with ASD comprehensively. This article briefly introduces the objectives, contents, preliminary progress, strength and limitations, as well as further prospects of the ASD cohort study, mainly focusing on the overall design and current progress.