Casting for the Cure

Autism is a congenital mental disorder, which is estimated to affect one of 150 births in the United Sates. It is among a group of disorders, including Asperger syndrome, which are classified as the ASD (autism spectrum disorders). Autism affects the social and communication development of children and is usually apparent before the age of two. It may cause restrictive and repetitive behavior, disruptive to the child’s caretakers, and possibly dangerous to the child itself. While autism can occur at all IQ levels, there is a higher incidence of mental retardation among autistic children, and 20 to 30 percent may have seizures. Some autism sufferers are savants, with an area in which they excel such as music, baseball statistics, or some other specific interest.

Autism has been blamed on many things, including bad reactions to childhood immunizations, but studies indicate that is almost certainly a genetic disorder. How the genes are disrupted to produce the behavioral mutations has not been clearly understood, but researchers recently studied more than 100 families with a significant rate of autism and say they have identified at least six new genes that appear to contribute to the disorder. The study, published in the journal Science, substantiates that autism is not just a single simple disorder, but can be caused by a range of factors, both genetic and environmental.

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An international team of scientists studying genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders by focusing on families where both parents shared a recent ancestor, found that seemingly diverse genes linked to autism had something in common in that many were triggered by by brain development that is regulated by early childhood experience.

The findings support the emerging and rather exciting notion that autism is caused by disruptions in the formation of new connections in a baby’s brain during early learning experiences, which coincides with autism’s onset during a child’s first twelve months of life. The findings add to the excitement in that they introduce the element of hope: perhaps it is possible to develop therapies to reactivate the disabled genes.

The study is the work of US scientists Dr Christopher Walsh, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and who also works at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and at Children’s Hospital Boston, and geneticist Dr Eric Morrow of Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues in the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Kuwait. It is published in the 11th July issue of the journal Science.

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