The National Database for Autism Research (NDAR), created by the National Institutes of Health to ease data sharing among autism researchers, has released the first batch of data on more than 10,000 participants enrolled in federally funded autism research studies.

In families with more than one child diagnosed with autism, younger siblings appear to be more severely affected by the disorder, according to new data presented Tuesday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Better performance on intelligence tests that measure spatial rather than verbal ability is inherited in people with autism, according to a paper published online in October in Human Genetics.

People with autism may belong to one of four distinct categories based on their medical history, according to a study published in the October Autism Research.

The Simons Simplex Collection (SSC), a database of genetic and clinical information from families that include one child with autism, has gathered data from more than 2,000 different families, researchers report in the October issue of Neuron.

A searchable new database will greatly ease the task of comparing results from more than 25 diagnostic tests for autism, by creating clusters of the various symptoms measured.

Parents and siblings of people with autism have abnormal eye movements and score higher on tests evaluating traits associated with the disorder.

Three articles published in the past few weeks show that diagnostic categories marked off neatly on the page often bleed together messily in the clinic.

Toddlers who abruptly lose language, social or other developmental skills are more likely to have severe autism a few years later compared with children who have consistent delays from an early age. That’s the conclusion of the largest study thus far of autism onset patterns, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Autism and intellectual disability often occur together, but in most cases that overlap is not genetic, according to a study of twin pairs published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. Unraveling this link might help researchers pinpoint brain circuits involved in both conditions, and better understand the diversity of symptoms in the autism spectrum, experts say.