Dr Alexa Pohl

Doctoral Scientist

Alexa is funded by a Trinity College Doctoral Scholarship. She published a study investigating ‘steroidopathy’ in women with autism spectrum conditions. Steroidopathy is a term she coined to cover symptoms related to Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) but where PCOS may not have been formally diagnosed. Such symptoms are driven by elevated prenatal sex steroid hormones such as fetal testosterone.

She is also studying a panel of sex steroid hormones in saliva and/or serum from people with or without autism spectrum conditions, and their parents, funded by the Autism Research Trust. She is also testing correlates of the ‘masculinization programming window’ (MPW) in people with autism, following on the work from the ARC and the Danish Biobank (State Serum Institute) showing elevated fetal sex steroids (androgens) in autism, and is leading on the analysis fetal estrogens in autism.

Beyond her work in the endocrinology of autism, she is the lead investigator in a project working with mothers with autism, investigating the challenges they encounter in health, education, and social care, and presented her work at the United Nations as a disability advocate at a briefing for the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).