Numerous studies detail the complex challenges and the dearth of treatments that people with autism face as they mature into adulthood. Why are there so few solutions?
 

Independent living, community support and high levels of motivation help people with autism find and keep jobs, reports a study published 18 June in Research in Developmental Disabilities.

The precious few long-term studies of autism have produced unique insight into the development and ultimate outcomes of the disorder. How can we encourage more of them?

A handful of long-term studies, each including up to several hundred participants, have followed people with autism for close to two decades. As the children in some of these studies come of age, researchers are piecing together the disorder’s trajectories.

Adults with autism fare better now than they did in the 1960s, when scientists first began tracking outcomes, reports a perspective published in February’s World Psychiatry.

Men with autism drive as well as controls do, but they focus less on the road ahead, according to research published 22 January in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

People with autism who inhaled regular doses of the hormone oxytocin were better at recognizing others’ emotions and reported a higher quality of life than those who took a placebo, according to a small study published 5 December in Molecular Autism.

A growing number of reports of adult-onset symptoms in Phelan-McDermid syndrome underline the need to follow people with the disorder throughout their lives, says Katy Phelan.

People with autism have fewer children than average, and so do their brothers, according to a study of Swedes born between 1950 and 1970.

We know little about autism past adolescence, but a well-studied generation of children with autism will change that.