One of the largest genome-wide screens of methyl tags in postmortem brains has found that people with autism have three unique regions of methylation — chemical modifications that affect gene expression. The results were reported 3 September in Molecular Psychiatry.
Rodent models that recapitulate the core features of autism often have additional traits, leading us to ask whether these traits are integral to autism, says Elisa Hill-Yardin.
Elliott Sherr is unraveling the effects of genetics and brain structure in a handful of disparate disorders that each illuminates some aspect of autism.
Despite a sizable overlap in symptoms and medications, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia each has a defining signature. The findings are based on an analysis of electronic medical records from California hospitals, published 16 August.
Researchers have uncovered the mechanism by which a candidate drug for Angelman syndrome activates UBE3A, the gene that is silenced in the syndrome, according to a study published 20 August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Neurons derived from individuals who carry extra copies of an autism-linked chromosomal region have gene expression patterns that are unexpectedly similar to those of neurons with deletions of the region. The unpublished findings were presented Thursday at the Dup15q Alliance Scientific Meeting in Sacramento, California.
The most popular drugs prescribed for autism in some countries often have serious side effects or have not been vetted in robust clinical trials, finds a study published 5 September in Psychopharmacology.
Teasing apart the link between autism and epilepsy opens the door for a possible preventive option for some cases of autism. But is the potential worth the risks?
Methylation — modifications to DNA that regulate gene expression — may explain why identical twins with the same Rett syndrome mutation have different symptoms, according to a study published 21 June in PLoS One.
Children with autism who are older than 13 years and have low intelligence are at the greatest risk of having epilepsy, according to one of the largest epidemiological studies on the issue to date, published 4 July in PLoS One.