NEWS

A comprehensive review has found no scientific basis for a controversial technique that supposedly helps autistic people communicate.

Children with autism who carry mutations in the chromosomal region 16p11.2 or the gene CHD8 — two of the leading risk factors for autism — show distinct patterns of chemical tags on their DNA.

The more words autistic children hear as infants — and the more verbal interactions they have with their caregivers — the better their language skills at age 2.

Following pushback from scientists, the U.S. National Institutes of Health has issued a two-year delay on a rule requiring basic researchers to register their studies as clinical trials.

Envisioned as bioRxiv’s clinical cousin, the new preprint server medRxiv hosts unpublished manuscripts describing original medical research.

The brains of some autistic children may not adapt to repeated touch or sound, even after several minutes.

Results from a new trial suggest that it’s safe to treat autistic children with umbilical cord stem cells. But parents must pay for the pricey infusions, and no one knows how or if the cells work.

Adults with autism are nearly 50 percent more likely to die in the hospital than their typical peers.

Brain tissues from people with autism of unknown cause and from people with either of two genetic forms of the condition all show similar patterns of methyl groups on DNA.

At 10 months of age, infants later diagnosed with autism show key differences in joint attention, a behavior in which two people focus on the same object or event.