Identifying genetic variants that affect the expression of other genes can enhance traditional gene association analyses and highlight candidate risk factors for autism, according to a study published 16 May in Molecular Autism.
Studies of autism prevalence should screen a representative sample of all individuals in the population, even those with no indications of the disorder, says epidemiologist Young-Shin Kim.
Girls diagnosed with autism have slower brain growth in the first year of their life than typically developing children, whereas boys’ brains grow at the same rate as those of typical children, according to a population-based study in Norway.
Researchers have identified deletions in SHANK1 — the third member of a gene family that is closely linked to autism — in five men with the disorder, they reported 4 May in the American Journal of Human Genetics. This is the first study linking SHANK1 mutations to people with autism.
The odds of having a child with autism begin to rise at age 35 for both men and women, but that risk does not increase further when both parents are over 35, according to a large study published in the March issue of Annals of Epidemiology.
The genetic risk factors for autism may also increase a person’s risk of developing ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis of the spine, and decrease the risk of multiple sclerosis, according to a study published 13 December in Translational Psychiatry.
The French documentary Le Mur (The Wall) shows that many psychoanalysts in France shun biological explanations for autism.
A commonly used flame retardant may lead to deficits in sociability, learning and memory in healthy female mice and those that model Rett syndrome, according to a study published 15 February in Human Molecular Genetics. The effects are different in Rett syndrome models compared with healthy mice, suggesting gene-environment interactions.
The brains of men and women with Asperger syndrome are more similar than are those of male and female controls, according to a study published in the January issue of the American Journal of Neuroradiology. The results lend support to the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism, the researchers say.