People on the spectrum, and girls and women in particular, are at high risk of suicide; siblings of autistic people are also at heightened risk.

Autistic women show unusually strong connections, and autistic men unusually weak ones, between two brain regions.

Exposure to inflammation in the womb may affect the brain and behavior of males and females differently.

People with autism who harm themselves are more than 30 times as likely as the general population to commit suicide. The risk is especially pronounced among girls and women on the spectrum.

Boys and girls with autism get virtually identical scores on three commonly used diagnostic tests, suggesting that sex doesn’t affect the scores.

One of the leading theories of autism posits that girls and women are biologically protected from the condition.

The ‘extreme male brain’ theory suggests that autism is an exaggeration of systematic sex differences in ways of thinking.

A pair of maps that depict variation in the human genome may help reveal the genetic roots of autism.