Shifts in diagnostic criteria have only added to the condition’s bedeviling heterogeneity, an analysis of smiling, sitting, walking and other early milestones in more than 17,000 autistic children reveals.

About 15 percent of genes currently included in clinical genetic tests for autism or intellectual disability don’t have enough evidence to support their ties to the conditions, the panel found.

The growth differences vary between autistic boys and girls and are most apparent among children with prominent social difficulties.

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging data support the remote tactics that kept autism diagnosis going during lockdowns.

The male sex bias in autism may in large part be a product of how common diagnostic tools measure traits in boys versus girls at a single point in time, according to a new study.

In this edition, a diagnostic measure shows no significant differences between sexes, and a survey confirms increased gender diversity among children with autism.

Neurona Health, a company in San Francisco, California, backed away from part of its newly launched services after Spectrum started reporting about them.

The pandemic has forced many health-care students to train online, raising concerns about their readiness.

Despite scant publicly available data, makers of the ‘exposome’-based method say it could help with diagnosing autism and identifying subtypes.

As 2021 comes to a close, Spectrum recaps some of the biggest trends in autism science this year: studies of sex differences, noncoding regions of the genome and points of convergence, as well as efforts to improve screening and participatory research.