Risperidone, the first drug approved for children with autism and the most widely used, improves some children’s behavior but can have severe side effects, suggests an informal analysis of the drug’s use. 

Poorly designed animal drug studies for motor disorders have led to spurious conclusions for the clinical trials that follow. This may be even more true for autism research, says Michael Ehlers.

Aripiprazole, one of two autism drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat autism symptoms, may be no more effective than a placebo after a few months.

Evidence is finally accumulating that early diagnosis and behavioral interventions improve the lives of people with autism. Even so, increasingly the question isn’t just whether early intervention works but also the best age at which to intervene.

Insulin-like growth factor 2, a hormone involved in fetal growth, reverses abnormal social behaviors, repetitive behaviors and memory impairments in BTBR mice, a popular model of autism. The unpublished results were presented Monday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

The most popular drugs prescribed for autism in some countries often have serious side effects or have not been vetted in robust clinical trials, finds a study published 5 September in Psychopharmacology.

The majority of people lacking a functional copy of the SHANK3 gene have both autism and severe intellectual disability, according to a study published 11 June in Molecular Autism.

The more researchers poke around, the more likely they are to find a significant effect — and the more likely that the effect they end up reporting is just a fluke. A new kind of journal article, the ‘registered report,’ may address this problem, says Jon Brock.

Following the suspension in early May of two clinical trials of arbaclofen, a candidate drug for autism and fragile X syndrome, parents are appealing to the U.S. government and several pharmaceutical companies to continue testing the drug.

The lack of substantial evidence to support the use of music therapies for autism limits its implementation in schools and clinics, says Anjana Bhat.