By merging genetic data from two large clinical repositories, from a total of more than 30,000 children, researchers have identified 18 copy number variants (CNVs) — DNA deletions or duplications — that play a role in autism. The findings appeared 9 October in Molecular Psychiatry.
The risk of developing autism increases for every week short of 37 weeks of gestation, according to a large epidemiological study published 1 September in The Journal of Pediatrics.
The brains of individuals with autism express low levels of genes involved in metabolism and protein assembly, according to a postmortem study published 12 September in PLoS One.
Two healthcare organizations have pooled their data to create a registry of 20,000 people with autism, a resource that may help speed up clinical trials and other research.
Adults with autism are less specific and less reliable than controls at recognizing emotions from facial expressions, according to a study published 27 September in Neuropsychologia.
A new candidate gene for autism, CHD8, may account for up to 0.4 percent of cases of the disorder, according to research published today in Science. CHD8 is one of six genes identified that together may contribute to one percent of autism cases.
The loss of a 600-kilobase region on chromosome 16 leads to intellectual disability, obesity, a large head and, sometimes, autism, according to a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Medical Genetics.
Children with autism have abnormal lung anatomy, according to a study published 28 August in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The results suggest a potential biomarker of autism, researchers say.
Early intensive therapy may normalize the brain’s response to faces in young children with autism, according to a study published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The results are part of a randomized, controlled trial of a treatment called the Early Start Denver Model.
Postmortem brains from individuals with autism have abnormal levels of long non-coding RNAs, which regulate the expression of genes, according to a study published 5 September in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.