Pregnant women who take beta-2 adrenergic agonists, commonly prescribed to treat asthma, are no more likely to have a child with autism than are those who don’t take the drugs.

Children with autism who suffer from severe gastrointestinal problems show markedly lower-than-normal levels of enzymes needed to digest complex sugars, and of transporters that allow simple sugars to be absorbed into the blood.

Defects in a signaling pathway that regulates learning and memory could underlie regressive autism, a sudden loss of language or social ability.

Girls with autism have more brain matter than do either controls or girls with developmental disabilities. This defect is particularly pronounced in the left superior frontal gyrus, a region in the medial prefrontal cortex that is responsible for higher-order cognitive function.

A $10 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation is funding a five-year project to develop new technologies that can help clinicians diagnose and treat autism.

The brains of individuals with autism express lower levels of proteins that direct neuronal growth compared with those of controls.

Two new genetic mouse models that debuted this week show that having too many or too few copies of certain genetic regions leads to an array of symptoms reminiscent of autism.

Duplications and deletions of genetic regions linked to autism are rare in individuals referred for genetic testing, but occur at a higher rate than in the general population.

Individuals who have multiple children with autism have more severe social and communication deficits than either controls or those who have only one child with autism.

Mice lacking the autism-linked gene CNTNAP2 show many of the behaviors associated with the disorder, and exhibit brain circuit disruptions similar to those seen in people who carry mutations in the gene.