Neuronal alterations outside the brain may help to explain a host of the condition’s characteristic traits, including sensory changes, gut problems and motor differences.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a reckoning, in which autism clinicians had to redefine best practices and expand how children are evaluated. The remote assessments they developed may help solve a persistent problem: the long wait families endure to get a diagnosis in the United States.

The power struggle between researchers, autistic self-advocates and parents is threatening progress across the field.

A meeting in Texas reckons with the future of treatment, following two setbacks in 2020.

Iama Therapeutics is hoping a new class of molecule will prove successful against an old target in autism.

Long cast in supporting roles in the brain, astrocytes are now emerging as primary players in certain characteristics of autism and related conditions.

Doctors can prescribe it, but evidence that ketamine eases autism traits is still preliminary.

Swiss biotech Stalicla hopes to bring precision medicine to autism. Experts praise efforts to identify autism subgroups, but evidence to support the company’s claims has yet to be seen.

Scientists initially embraced the notion that autistic people have difficulty with ‘theory of mind’ — and some went so far as to assert that it explained the condition’s core traits. Many came to view it as passé, but aspects of the original idea are enjoying a renaissance.

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