This week’s podcast is a short summary of just a few of the presentations. There was more of an emphasis on what has been called “real life” research questions like employment, quality of life, and relationships. As a result, some of the more basic science questions around autism are now being presented at other meetings. This is a shame. This podcast follows some of those basic science questions to the now translational opportunities that were presented at the meeting. It also highlights some newer findings that will provide help to people at all ages who need supports and services.
Podcast: A sampling of science from the International Meeting of Autism Research
On this week’s podcast, two chief science officers! Dr. Alycia Halladay interviewed Dr. Thomas Frazier of Autism Speaks on what’s needed to improve clinical trials and drug intervention for autism. The two CSOs also discussed other important in ASD research, including disclosure of a diagnosis, sex differences, and some of the newest more exciting findings.
The goal of the Autism Sisters Project is to build a large genetic database that researchers can use to explore the sex difference in autism diagnoses between boys and girls and discover how the potential protective factor, known as the female protective effect, can be harnessed to help people with autism of both sexes. NBC New York spoke with the Mullers, a family participating in the study, as well as with ASF Chief Science Officer Dr. Alycia Halladay and the Seaver Autism Center team at Mount Sinai in New York. You can watch the news clip here.
On this week’s podcast, highlights of a new study led by Dr. Amy Kalkbrenner of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee published in Environmental Health Perspectives—certain air pollutants from cars and coal burning plants were associated with autism risk and severity. This scientific evidence supports policies which keep U.S. Environmental Protection Agency infrastructure intact to monitor air quality.
Researchers at Autism BrainNet node UC Davis MIND Institute found that while typically-developing children gain more neurons in a region of the brain that governs social and emotional behavior, the amygdala, as they become adults, people with ASD do not. The open access research published in PNAS studied 52 postmortem human brains, both neurotypical and ASD, ranging from 2 to 48 years of age. There were more neurons in young children with ASD, but as they got older, those numbers went down. The press release on this article can be read here.
A new study by the CDC, including Dr. Matthew Maenner, ASF Grantee ’10, found that 95% of children with autism have at least one psychiatric or medical comorbidity, which may have a role in age of first evaluation—the more comorbid conditions, the earlier the first evaluation for ASD. Read the study here.
SETD5 is a master regulator of gene activity that controls the activity of potentially thousands of other downstream genes in the same cell. Researchers, supported in part by ASF, found that this gene is associated with a subtype of autism that is seen mostly in males and includes intellectual disability and facial dysmorphology. This is further support of different genes and gene combinations contributing to different features of autism, rather than the entire spectrum. The UC San Diego investigators, including Dr. Isabella Rodrigues Fernandes, ASF Grantee ’17, in this study will continue to investigate this gene and how it affects brain development, which may lead to therapeutic interventions for those who carry this mutation. Read the study here.
On this week’s podcast, a study led by Elizabeth Berg in the lab of Dr. Jill Silverman at UC Davis published in the journal Autism Research demonstrated SHANK3’s role in core social communication deficits in a rat model of autism. Rats exhibit both receptive and expressive communication. SHANK3 mutations are seen in those with Phelan-McDermid Syndrome as well as in 1% of people with autism. This new study opens up new ways to understand autism symptoms in an animal model, and moves autism research using animals forward significantly.
This summer, ASF will begin funding a post-doctoral fellowship to Dr. Michelle Failla at Vanderbilt University to understand the pain response in people with autism. This study will examine both verbal responses to pain, as well as nonverbal responses like heart rate, facial expression and stress response, to a mild stimuli in adults with ASD. In a new blog, ASF president and co-founder Alison Singer talks about experiencing the research protocol. You can read more here.
Autism Science Foundation grantees and fellows will be giving several presentations throughout the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in San Francisco this week. If you will be at IMFAR, see details below so you can attend their presentations. If not, see below anyway to learn about the great work ASF grantees and fellows are doing. We will be posting on Facebook and tweeting all throughout the conference!
Thursday, May 11th
Karen Chenausky
Session Title: Communication and Language
Session Date/Time: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: Predictors of Speech Improvement in Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Christine Ochoa
Session Title: Animal Models
Session Date/Time: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: Loss of KCTD13 Decreases Hippocampal Synaptic Transmission Via the Small Gtpase RhoA
Dara Chan
Session Title: Adult Outcome: Medical, Cognitive, Behavioral
Session Date/Time: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
Poster Title: Examining Environmental Predictors of Social Participation and Service Use for Adults with ASD Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Friday, May 12th
Jacqueline Barkoski
Session Title: Epidemiology
Session Date/Time: Friday, May 12, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: In Utero Pyrethroid Pesticide Exposure and Child Cognitive Development from 6 to 36 Months in the Marbles Longitudinal Cohort
Saturday, May 13th
Tychele Turner
Session Title: Gene Discovery in ASD
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 1:15 PM-2:05 PM
Presentation Title: Genome Sequencing of 2,064 Genomes from 516 Simplex Families with Autism
Oral Presentation Start Time: 1:15 PM
Donna Werling (on behalf of Stephan Sanders)
Session Title: Gene Discovery in ASD
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 1:15 PM-2:05 PM
Presentation Title: Interaction Between Human Sexual Dimorphism and ASD Neurobiology
Oral Presentation Start Time: 1:39 PM
Shweta Ghai
Session Title: Early Development (< 48 months)
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: Physiological Measurements of Voice Quality in Children with Autism Using Electroglottography in Relation to Clinical Assessment Outcome
Aarti Nair
Session Title: Early Brain Development
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 2:10 PM-3:00 PM
Presentation Title: Altered Early Development of Resting-State Network Properties in Infants at High Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder
Oral Presentation Start Time: 2:10 PM
Individual research studies are great. But even better is when someone takes these studies and puts them together to see if one study shows the same thing another does, and if they do, then is the effect size consistent? Sometimes you can only do this by going old school and pooling the data from the individual studies. This is especially helpful in determining the effectiveness of different interventions. This week, Dr. Matt Lerner and his colleagues at the Social Competence & Treatment Lab at Stony Brook University published a meta analysis of group social skills interventions. They put together well-designed studies and asked: Do they work? Are they better than getting nothing at all? To find out, click here listen to this week’s ASF podcast with Dr. Alycia Halladay.