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Spectrum: Autism Research News

WEEK OF
May 16th

Folate flap

A preliminary study linking high folate levels in mothers to an elevated risk of autism in their children generated confusion — and ultimately some level-headed media reports — in the past several days.

The scientists, who presented their findings last week at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Baltimore, observed an association between a small number of mothers who had high folate levels right after giving birth and a doubling of the risk that their children would later have autism.

Folate supplements are recommended for pregnant women because a deficiency in this B vitamin is associated with developmental issues and autism in children. Folate is found in fruits and vegetables, but many people eat these foods in insufficient quantities.

Although some people could have incorrectly interpreted the study’s results as contrary to advice to take prenatal folate, the Los Angeles Times reported that mothers who take prenatal multivitamins three to five times per week are less likely to have a child diagnosed with autism than mothers who don’t take the multivitamins.

“Our work is very consistent with previous work showing that supplementation is critical to maternal health and child development and health,” Daniele Fallin, who worked on the study, told ResearchGate. “So at this point the recommendation is definitely to continue supplementation.”

Good call

If you’re an early-career scientist, you would be wise to jump at opportunities to serve as a reviewer of scientific papers, according to a Nature Jobs story.

Although the task can take anywhere from several hours to weeks, the benefits go beyond ensuring scientific quality, Sarah Blackford, a career adviser with the Society for Experimental Biology in London, told the journal. Judging papers lets you hone critical-thinking skills, broaden knowledge and build a reputation with editors who might consider publishing your paper in the future.

Your review should be extensive — but polite. Examine data quality, identify logic holes, scrutinize methods, assess the plausibility of results, and pinpoint the paper’s novelty and importance. Then finesse your delivery. “Sit back and think how you would like a constructive review to be written if you were the author of the paper,” structural biologist Stephen Curry of Imperial College London told Nature Jobs. “Derisiveness, aggressiveness or rivalry have absolutely no place in a review.”

After all, some referee reports are published online.

Sources
Nature Jobs / 11 May 2016
Blood privacy

Privacy concerns are dogging rule-makers in three states for how to handle blood samples from newborns. Doctors use the samples to screen the babies for sickle cell anemia, phenylketonuria and other diseases.

The tests are mandatory in all 50 U.S. states. The results may lead to early treatment, saving or improving an estimated 12,000 newborns’ lives annually in the process, Jelili Ojodu of the Association of Public Health Laboratories told The New York Times.

But states often store the samples long after the screenings are complete. Fears over how the blood might be used have led to lawsuits in Minnesota, Texas and Indiana. Parents are concerned that insurance companies could use test results to charge higher premiums for people with costly conditions. Or they fear that research databases will house their child’s genetic information forever. In fact, drug companies used samples from babies in Minnesota for research.

Minnesota and Texas destroyed millions of samples as a result of the legal action. Parents in Indiana want the same there, but the Indiana Court of Appeals dismissed their lawsuit last month.

In many cases, parents can choose what happens to their child’s blood. Texas now allows parents to opt out of allowing the state to use their children’s blood samples for research. Indiana offers an opt-in program for the same thing. And on the Indiana health department website, parents can specifically ask that their child’s blood samples be destroyed.

Sources
Pay gap

The pay gap between men and women working in science and engineering opens early. Women with Ph.D.s in these areas make 31 percent less than men one year after graduation, reveals a new analysis of Ph.D.s received at four U.S. universities between 2007 and 2010.

The gap dropped to 11 percent when the researchers controlled for field of study. Women gravitate toward biology, chemistry and health. These fields generally pay less than engineering, computer science, math and physics — which tend to draw more men, according to the study, published in the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings.

Marriage and children also appear to play a strong role in women’s reduced pay. Married women with children earn less than single women and married women without children.

Invisible autism

An autism diagnosis eludes many affected black people, who are also  underrepresented in biomedical research, according to an essay published Tuesday in Undark magazine. We explored both issues in our recent Deep Dive.

Author Steve Silberman suggests that the exclusion results in part from the writings of Leo Kanner, who first identified autism. Kanner theorized that the condition occurred more often in highly ambitious, upper-middle class families. Many then associated autism with being white.

Kanner’s work set the stage for decades of misdiagnosing black children with ‘mental retardation’ or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder instead of autism.

And a 2010 report published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders shows that  black children and their relatives are poorly represented in genetic databases used in autism research.

A nonprofit organization, The Color of Autism, has helped to address the issue. So has “All the Weight of Our Dreams,” an anthology on autism and race published last month.

Sources
Undark / 17 May 2016
Job moves

BJ Casey plans to join Yale University’s psychology department this summer. She currently serves as director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology in New York. The institute now seeks her replacement. Frederick Shic is leaving Yale’s Child Study Center for a job at the University of Washington in Seattle. Making a career change? Send your news to [email protected].