Autism Spectrum Disorders News

About one in 59 children aged 8 years in the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disability Network was identified as having autism in 2014, according to recently released data.

NEW ORLEANS — The broad range of autism spectrum disorder in adults necessitates a variable approach with each patient, according to a presenter here at the American College of Physicians Internal Medicine Meeting.

Known as the “cuddle hormone” and “love hormone,” oxytocin is associated with warm feelings and social bonds. Indeed, oxytocin plays a key role in establishing one of the most primal and important relationships: that between mother and child. The hormone is involved in the progression of labor, the nurturing act of breast-feeding and the focusing of maternal attention on an infant. “Oxytocin is released within the brain at the same time a woman is giving birth, at the same time she is nursing, and it transforms her brain so that baby becomes the most special thing in the environment,” Larry J. Young, PhD, professor of psychiatry, director of the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience and director of the Silvio O. Conte Center for Oxytocin and Social Cognition at Emory University, told Endocrine Today. “It increases the salience of that baby’s cues. That’s the quintessential role, the original role, of oxytocin that happens in all mammals: focusing the attention of the brain on social cues.”

Children with intellectual difficulty or autism are more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medications than those with a psychotic diagnosis and are prescribed antipsychotics at a younger age and for a longer period, according to research findings.

Women with polycystic ovary syndrome are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, when compared with similar women without PCOS, according to findings published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Study results showed that the effects of fragile X gene expression on the development of connectivity in white matter brain structures are well-established when a child is as young as 6 months old.

According to the CDC, approximately one in 68 children have autism and more than 3.5 million people in the United States live with an autism spectrum disorder.

Children who have been diagnosed with ASD and their younger siblings are significantly less likely to be completely vaccinated, with the greatest rates of undervaccination observed in siblings between 1 to 11 months and 1 to 2 years, according to findings published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Results of a large genome-wide association study on empathy revealed that genes play a small role in empathy, and that these genetic variations associated with empathy affect psychiatric conditions — such as autism, schizophrenia and anorexia — and psychological factors.

CHICAGO — Mothers’ prepregnancy waist circumference, but not BMI, was associated with their children’s risk for autism, according to study findings presented here.