A high-profile autism researcher has been indicted for stealing more than $1 million in autism research money.

As awareness about autism has spread in California, lower-income families have become more likely to seek a diagnosis of autism, says a new study.

Children with autism and those who have fathers older than 31 both have lower-than-normal levels of proteins that regulate other genes, according to a study published in February in PLoS One.

Cultural stigma, lack of awareness about mental health and poor medical infrastructure have led to inaccurate diagnoses and artificially low autism prevalence in many countries around the world, epidemiologists say.

For many years, autism was considered synonymous with intellectual disability. A new study shows that perception is inaccurate.

Infection with swine flu in early pregnancy causes inflammation in the placenta, and raises the risk of schizophrenia and autism in the offspring, according to a study published in January in Neuropharmacology.

Duplication or deletion of 16p11.2 — a much-studied chromosomal region with a strong association with autism — is present in 0.76 percent of people with the disorder, according to a meta-analysis published February in Genetics in Medicine.

The brains of people with autism show three distinct periods of abnormal development — overgrowth in infancy, prematurely arrested growth in childhood, and shrinking between adolescence and middle age — according to a study in Brain Research.

A man’s risk of fathering a child with autism begins to rise at age 30 and significantly increases after age 50, according to a report published online 30 November in Molecular Psychiatry.

As autism rates rise, so do health care costs for the disorder. Despite federal programs, some children with autism are falling through the cracks in the health care system.