A genome-wide association study has identified risk factors for Asperger syndrome, some of which overlap with chromosomal regions implicated in autism, according to a study in the December issue of Autism Research.
The brains of people with autism show three distinct periods of abnormal development — overgrowth in infancy, prematurely arrested growth in childhood, and shrinking between adolescence and middle age — according to a study in Brain Research.
As genetic testing becomes routine, people are likely to face difficult choices about parenthood.
Infant siblings of children with autism tend to lag behind their peers at the earliest stages of language development before catching up at around 12 months of age.
Autism is popularly viewed as a disorder of childhood, not old age, but that doesn’t mean senior citizens are unaffected.
As autism rates rise, so do health care costs for the disorder. Despite federal programs, some children with autism are falling through the cracks in the health care system.
People with autism tend to use more expressive language than controls do when asked to describe the movement of geometric shapes. But their descriptions are inaccurate.
A new drug appears to relieve symptoms of fragile X syndrome by blocking the over-production of a key protein in a subset of people with the disorder, according to a 6 January study in Science Translational Medicine.
Jaundice in newborns is common and usually harmless, but can lead to serious complications, including epilepsy, cerebral palsy and perhaps autism, according to a new study.
The goal of studying siblings of children with autism is to identify an early diagnostic marker for the disorder. What researchers are finding instead are distinct traits shared by family members who remain healthy.