Children with autism who have trouble with daily activities and who lag on measures of cognition are the most likely to have persistently severe symptoms. The findings, based on a long-term study of children between 2 and 5 years of age, were published 2 August in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Age-based cutoff scores for BISCUIT, an early diagnostic tool for children with autism traits, help clinicians accurately identify children who also have other disorders, says Johnny Matson.

Fragile X syndrome is the leading cause of inherited intellectual disability and often autism, but most people who work with special-needs children lack basic knowledge about the syndrome, according to a new study.

Using telemedicine, physicians can diagnose autism at a distance almost as well as they can in person, reports a new study published 19 July in Telemedicine and e-Health.

Researchers can increase the power of studies that link genetic variants to autism by factoring in potential subgroups of the disorder, according to a report published 26 June in PLoS One.
 

A new clinical test for duplications or deletions of chromosomal regions is customized to detect more than 380 known changes, including many that are linked to autism. The method was published 24 June in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A.

A global approach to understanding autism that respects the uniqueness of different communities is not a choice, but a necessity, says Mayada Elsabbagh.

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.

There is usually an implicit assumption that autism tests measure the same traits in the same way across individuals with and without a clinical diagnosis of the disorder. But that may not be the case, say Aja Louise Murray and Tom Booth.

Few studies of autism prevalence have been conducted in low- and middle-income countries. Freely available screening and diagnostic tools could help address this disparity.