Power player; placebo predictors
The MacArthur Foundation honors neuroscientist Beth Stevens, and researchers pin down factors that influence the placebo effect in autism trials.
The MacArthur Foundation honors neuroscientist Beth Stevens, and researchers pin down factors that influence the placebo effect in autism trials.
The National Institutes of Health is reviving a defunct study that aimed to identify environmental risk factors for autism and other childhood disorders. Some researchers say the do-over is unlikely to live up to the original project’s promise.
Contrary to previous findings, children born by cesarean section are not at an increased risk of autism, says a Swedish sibling study.
Women who are overweight while pregnant have an increased risk of having a child with autism. But a new study suggests that genetics, not the obesity per se, underlies the association.
Children born to women who develop diabetes during the first or second trimester of pregnancy increase their risk of autism by 42 percent.
Missing a swath of chromosome 16 with strong ties to autism disrupts proteins crucial for early brain development. The findings open the door to targeted interventions.
Increasing parental age accounted for just 2.7 percent of the rise in autism prevalence between 1994 and 2001, according to a study of New York City families published 17 March in Maternal and Child Health Journal.
Children with too many or too few copies of certain genes are more likely to have autism, as are children born to women who battled a severe infection while pregnant. These seemingly disparate risk factors may work together to worsen autism symptoms.
Investors pour money into ‘brain medicines,’ and people with autism debate the need for a cure.
The little-studied autism gene ANKRD11 helps to package DNA in the nucleus and plays a critical role in the early growth and positioning of neurons.