Having one child with autism raises the odds of having a second child with the disorder 20-fold, according to one of the largest epidemiological studies so far to address the inheritance of autism risk.
Children with autism have atypical patterns of epigenetic modifications — chemical tags on DNA that influence gene expression, suggests a study published 29 May in PLOS Genetics.
Women who take antidepressants such as Prozac while pregnant may increase their sons’ risk of autism and developmental disability, reports a study published 14 April in Pediatrics. But, like other studies before it, the study leaves room for doubt.
Children born to women who have low levels of the thyroid hormone have a moderately increased risk of developing autism, according to a large Danish study published 10 March in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Injecting antibodies taken from mothers of children with autism directly into the brains of fetal mice results in autism-like behaviors in the mice in adulthood, according to a study published 5 March in Behavioural Brain Research.
Children born to fathers older than 45 years have a heightened risk of developing a range of conditions, from autism to addiction, according to a large Swedish study published 1 April in JAMA Psychiatry.
The children of obese fathers may be at a 53 percent higher risk of autism than children whose fathers are a healthy weight, reports a large Norwegian study published 7 April in Pediatrics.
Researchers have created the first genetic monkey model of autism, they reported 6 March in Cell Stem Cell. The female monkey has a mutated version of the MeCP2 gene that causes Rett syndrome.
The brains of children with autism contain discrete patches of what look like immature neurons, according to a small study of postmortem brains published 27 March in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Three factors related to childbirth — preterm delivery, small size at birth and cesarean delivery — contribute to autism prevalence in the U.S., according to a study published in April in Annals of Epidemiology.