I do hope that they figure this out before I die. Every time I read something like this, I feel a little less guilty and a little more hopeful.
Researchers at the Autism Genome Project have released the biggest study to date on the genetics of autism, comparing the genes of 996 people on the autism spectrum with those of 1,287 people without the disorder. They found that people with certain genetic variations (CNVs) were 20 percent more likely to be autistic than people without them, but also that "most people with autism are probably genetically quite unique, each having their own genetic form of autism." The study was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Scientists believe that as many as 300 genes may be implicated in connection to autism and that the targeted genes are linked to cell formation and nervous system development. "These are not random hits in the genome," a geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory told Science Now. Still, "only 1 percent of the genetic defects were shared among the study participants," AOL News says, and very few were inherited from parents. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 110 children is on the autism spectrum, and the "the prevalence of autism among eight-year-olds has increased 57 percent from 2002 to 2006." The Guardian writes that uncovering the genetic basis of autism could "help further allay parents' fears of a sinister environmental cause" and assist in developing treatments for other diseases linked to CNVs, including learning disabilities, mental disorders, and epilepsy. In the meantime, scientists have enlisted 1,500 new participants to finish sequencing the whole genome.
Read original story in Discover | Thursday, June 10, 2010
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