[neverdem]

Association between Microdeletion and Microduplication at 16p11.2 and Autism

[Dr. Scarpetta]

The number of children diagnosed with autism has risen in recent years to as many as one in 150 American children, but experts are unsure whether its prevalence really is increasing or the trend is due to a broader definition of autism.

This is a parent's nightmare...

[neverdem]

Global variation in copy number in the human genome

You may have to register to read it.

[sageb1]

Interesting. I really don’t know that much about autism, but my new neighbor’s son is autistic, so I guess I’m about to find out a bit more. I would want to know more about the parents’ personal histories to see if there are any similarities - environmental or anything else.

[sageb1]

Do you know offhand of any famous personalities in history who were thought to be autistic?

[PAR35]

Hmmm. A generation or two ago, one of the anti-drug scare stories was that marijuana could cause genetic damage. How many of the kids with the genetic defect had a parent who had smoked weed?

[Ditto]

The researchers confirmed their findings by looking at DNA databases from Children's Hospital Boston and Iceland. The same defect was found in 1 percent of those with autism or related disorders. It was found in just seven of about 19,000 Iceland samples from people without the disorder.

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I'm am either missing something here or the writer screwed up big time. I would not call a correlation on such as small incidence.

[RhoTheta]

Autism ping

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.