Children who have severe autism symptoms, epilepsy or poor intelligence and language skills fare worse as they age than their peers with milder symptoms, according to two long-term studies published in July, one of which spanned 40 years.

Preschool-aged children with autism make developmental and behavioral gains, regardless of the type of classroom in which they are enrolled, say Brian Boyd and Samuel Odom.

Latino children with autism are diagnosed an average of a year later than their white peers and receive fewer services, reports the June issue of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

A new clinical test for duplications or deletions of chromosomal regions is customized to detect more than 380 known changes, including many that are linked to autism. The method was published 24 June in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A.

A new study looking at an auditory reflex raises important questions about whether autism is fundamentally a problem of high-level processing or something that arises from early disruptions in perceptual processing.
 

An autism-linked variant in the receptor for oxytocin may alter connections in the brain, according to a study published 17 May in Neuroimage.

Iceland’s autism prevalence of 1.2 percent is on par with that of other countries, according to a study published 20 June in BMJ Open.

New findings identifying the targets of antibodies found in mothers of children with autism add to mounting evidence that the prenatal immune environment can alter fetal brain development, and perhaps lead to autism. Now what?

An ear muscle is more sensitive to loud sounds in children with autism than in controls, according to a study published 3 July in Autism Research. The researchers say this measure could serve as a clinical biomarker of the disorder, but others fiercely disagree.

Children who meet the criteria for both autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have more severe behavioral problems than do children with either disorder alone, according to three studies published in the past few months.