Animal research hints that sex hormones may be responsible for the gender bias in autism. More research is needed in people to back this up, says a new review.

Only a small fraction of autism therapies are supported by robust scientific evidence, according to three reviews published in the May issue of Pediatrics.

A mysterious cluster of sudden deaths among young people who had a genetic syndrome is drawing attention to the high rate of unexplained deaths in individuals with autism and epilepsy.

As awareness about autism has spread in California, lower-income families have become more likely to seek a diagnosis of autism, says a new study.

Small duplications or deletions of DNA regions — called micro-copy number variations — may not lead directly to disease, but could raise the risk of autism when combined with other mutations, according to a study published in March in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics.

Autism advocacy backed by science has fueled significant social change as an emphasis on the higher-functioning end of the spectrum lessens the stigma of the diagnosis.

Practical and ethical challenges in translational research could be better overcome if clinical researchers were to add genetic counselors to their teams, a new report argues.

Individuals with autism use more brainpower in regions linked to visual perception, and less in those related to planning thoughts and actions, compared with healthy controls, according to a multi-study analysis published today in Human Brain Mapping.

Genetic syndromes associated with autism are increasingly being diagnosed in utero because of techniques that can identify subtle mutations in the genome. But the technology is ahead of the ethical debate on whether and how to inform parents about mutations with unknown effects.

Two children with Asperger syndrome have disruptions in the PARK2 gene — one child has a duplication in the gene whereas the other has a deletion — according to a study published in February in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.