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Scientists have for the first time established a common genetic link to autism and yesterday confirmed as many as 15 per cent of cases could be accounted for under this new discovery.

Three separate studies have made implications to suggest alterations on connections in the brain could be responsible for some cases.

Although the breakthrough does not offer a cure or treatment, it does finally help people to understand some of the causes for the condition, which can affect as many as one in 150 children.

National Institutes of Health acting director Dr Raynard Kington said, “These findings establish that genetic factors play a strong role in autism spectrum disorder,”

“Detailed analysis of the genes and how they affect brain development is likely to yield better strategies for diagnosing and treating children with autism.”

Autism can affect people across a wide spectrum of problems - whether it be those with ‘classic’ or severe autism where basic communication and interaction is very difficult to others who have problems with ordinary social skills.

For years doctors have been unable to pinpoint how autism is caused, although there has been a strong case for a genetic link as it can run in families.

“Previous studies have suggested that autism is a developmental disorder resulting from abnormal connections in the brain. These three studies suggest some of the genetic factors which might lead to abnormal connectivity,” Dr Thomas Insel, director of NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health, said in a statement.

DNA from over 12,000 people - both affected and unaffected - were studied by a team of international experts.

“We estimate that the variants we discovered may contribute to as many as 15 per cent of autism spectrum disorder cases in a population,” Dr Hakon Hakonarson of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who helped with the study, said in a statement.

“Most of the genes that have been identified in these studies are involved in the connections between neurons called synapses,” said Tony Monaco of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Britain’s University of Oxford, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

“This does seem to fit with what we know from brain scans - that people with autism may show different or reduced connectivity between different parts of the brain.”

However, this affected gene occurs in non-autistic people as well.

“While this gene variant is common in the general population, we discovered that it occurs about 20 per cent more often in children with autism,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind of the University of California Los Angeles, who worked on the study.

“Until now, no common genetic variant has been identified with such overwhelming evidence to support its role in autism spectrum disorders,” added Dr. Margaret Pericak-Vance of the University of Miami.