What is the probability of having a future child with autism if you already have one or more? Families want to know. It helps preparation, planning, will hopefully improve early screening and supports. The Baby Siblings Research Consortium analyzed a bigger group of siblings compared to their 2011 numbers and found the recurrence pretty stable – 1 in 5 siblings will have an autism diagnosis compared to 1 in 36 in the general population. However, this number depends on a lot of things: Sex of infant, sex of sibling with an existing ASD diagnosis, number of autistic children in the family, race and socioeconomic status. Listen this week to hear all the numbers.
Podcast: Recurrence rates for families with an ASD child
In case you missed it, listen to Alison Singer with Gina Kavali on her podcast @LifeWiththeSpectrum. Alison talks about the importance of autism research and science in general, and how families can get involved.
On this week’s podcast, Mia Kotivkoski, founder of her own 5013c and recent graduate of Stony Brook University, reviews why understanding cultural and contextual factors influence not just an autism diagnosis but general health and outcomes of a broad group of people. They include immigrants, racial and ethnic differences, and socio-economic factors. What can be done? Listen to this week’s podcast to learn more.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946718300758?via%3Dihub
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7614360
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-there-so-few-autism-specialists
In recognition of Father’s Day on the 16th, today’s podcast includes the latest research on fathers. Fathers may often be the “secondary caregiver” but should hardly be dismissed as inconsequential. Father’s sensitivity and insightfulness plays an important part in development, psychiatric diagnoses (including autism) change the the chance of having a child with autism, and more understanding is being done on the heritable factors associated with chemical exposures in the father.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616734.2024.2326416
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11059471/pdf/main.pdf
While NDBIs are generally considered beneficial, they still face controversies – do they actually work and does that translate to an improved quality of life for the family? This week’s #ASF podcast interviews Molly Reilly and Jinwei Song of @UConn to dive into these issues, as well as the role of the caregiver in the intervention and how their influence affects the outcome. References below.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38719439
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/13623613241227516
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-023-06198-x
As health care and outcomes for very premature infants has improved, scientists are able to track their longer term behavioral development, and that includes risk of developmental disorders like autism. On this week’s #ASFpodcast, Dr. Jessica Bradshaw discusses her recent research examining biological predictors like body temperature and heart rate and how they are linked to early autism features like social communication deficits in toddlerhood. All parents of pre-meet need to be vigilant and lean into resources like @BabyNavigator to help track their infant’s development.
Thank you to Dennis Wall from Stanford University for explaining what Machine Learning is, how it’s related to Artificial Intelligence (today’s four buzz words) and how these new technologies are helping families get a diagnosis. In this week’s podcast episode, he talks about the overall goals of these techniques, highlighting Cognoa’s CanvasDx to provide remote diagnoses to potentially reduce the waiting lists for families.
Did you miss the ASF 2024 Day of Learning and can’t wait for the videos to be posted? This is a 17 minute brief summary of what was discussed, but unfortunately, with no visuals. Don’t just listen to the podcast, watch the videos when they are posted. Also included in this podcast is a shoutout to the Profound Autism Summit which brought together hundreds of advocates around those who need 24/7 care for their lives. The link to their advocacy page is here: https://www.votervoice.net/ProfoundAutism/campaigns/112917/respond
Last week in North Carolina, the Meeting on Language in Autism was held, with 3 days of amazing presentations and lots of productive discussions about how language and speech develops and how people with autism communicate. This podcast describes the origins of language development and how intervention during toddlerhood can promote lifelong language abilities. To learn more about the meeting go to www.mola.org and to see the Autism Navigator, go to www.autismnavigator.org.
This podcast episode provides updates on studies that help with prediction of an autism diagnosis – which is important for preparing for the future and for intervening early. First, a study that uses environmental factors to create an equation for the probability of a diagnosis following a combination of of non-genetic factors only which does a fairly good, but not perfect, job at predicting a diagnosis. Second, a study that looks at the accuracy of a machine that predicts autism from eye gaze as early as 9 months of age and with only a 2 minute test. This one wasn’t as accurate as the one that takes longer and tests older kids, but it’s a first step. No ONE thing does a perfect job at predicting a diagnosis – it’s going to be a combination of things, tested over time and multiple times that will be most helpful at predicting a diagnosis. Both studies are open access!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10904522/pdf/fpsyt-15-1291356.pdf
Restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) range from hand flapping to debilitating self-injury. This student will investigate the biological basis for the broad range of RRBs by examining the development of the circuits in an area of the brain called the striatum. Pictures of the brain will be collected and analyzed at multiple time points in individuals from 1-4 years of age and matched with the presence and type of RRBs and later outcomes, like real-world function or adaptive behavior. The results will help identify critical windows for brain development when intervention can be most beneficial.
There is a critical need to understand how motor impairments drive development and predict outcomes in autism. Using an infant siblings research design, infants from 6 months of age will be tracked for 2 years to determine how specific motor impairments lead to social deficits that accompany an autism diagnosis. This study will utilize both home video observation and data gathered from activity sensors worn by the infant to examine specific motor abilities that are linked to later social skills in toddlers. The results of this study may identify potential areas of early intervention to improve developmental outcomes and possibly ameliorate autism symptoms.