The brains of people with autism show three distinct periods of abnormal development — overgrowth in infancy, prematurely arrested growth in childhood, and shrinking between adolescence and middle age — according to a study in Brain Research.

As genetic testing becomes routine, people are likely to face difficult choices about parenthood.

Infant siblings of children with autism tend to lag behind their peers at the earliest stages of language development before catching up at around 12 months of age.

A man’s risk of fathering a child with autism begins to rise at age 30 and significantly increases after age 50, according to a report published online 30 November in Molecular Psychiatry.

Autism is popularly viewed as a disorder of childhood, not old age, but that doesn’t mean senior citizens are unaffected.

Children with autism understand fewer words than their verbal ability would suggest, according to a study published in December in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders.

As autism rates rise, so do health care costs for the disorder. Despite federal programs, some children with autism are falling through the cracks in the health care system.

A new drug appears to relieve symptoms of fragile X syndrome by blocking the over-production of a key protein in a subset of people with the disorder, according to a 6 January study in Science Translational Medicine.

Copy number variations, or CNVs — duplications or deletions of DNA segments — can influence the expression of unrelated genes on the same chromosome, according to a study published in November in PLOS Biology.

Scientists have created mice that carry mutations in SHANK3, one of the strongest candidate genes for autism. The animals have behavioral and neurobiological features reminiscent of autism, researchers reported 17 December in Molecular Autism.