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Why the Environmental Protection Agency is important for autism

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The Environmental Protection Agency has a big job to do – keep our air and water clean.  They do so, in part, with air monitors placed across the United States which allow researchers to keep tabs on what is going on in our air.  This week, a study from Dr. Amy Kalkbrenner at UWM and colleagues replicated that certain types of air pollution increased risk of autism, as well as increased symptoms of severity of autism in those with a diagnosis.   These pollutants come from cars, but also coal burning power plants.  This new research calls for more action, not less, by the crucial staff and infrastructure of the EPA and policy to help support them do it.  #standwithEPA

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/ehp1867/

 

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Loss of skills in autism partially explained

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Is regression a sudden loss of previously acquired skills or is it the gradual decline in a particular area of function?  Using the right tools, both parents and clinicians can document the gaining and loss of skills in different areas, and they agree on what they see.  However, rather than being a single event, regression is slow, starting at around 12 months and showing continual declines through diagnosis.  Thanks to an NIMH day long symposium on the biological causes of regression, scientists got together to discuss this loss of skills on a biological level.  They think that the decline or loss of skills is due to biological events that disrupt the formation of specific brain circuits at critical times in development.  This can be because neurons stop developing, or maybe the brain goes overboard in shaping and pruning back connections.  If you want to see the amazing full day of presentations that aired in 2016, click here:  https://videocast.nih.gov/Summary.asp?file=19500&bhcp=1.  A link to the Ozonoff study described in the podcast is here:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29524310

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SLEEP: it’s what’s important for autism

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Sleep disturbances affect up to 80% of people with autism, and as it turns out, these sleep problems translate to daytime problems like probability of hospitalization, severity of symptoms and even employment.  This week’s podcast focuses on three new studies that examine the relationship between sleep problems and function in people with autism across the spectrum, and provides new insights on how to study sleep.  Dr. Ashura Buckley from the NIH will be speaking about sleep in autism at the Day of Learning on April 11th – if you have’t registered yet, there is still time:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2018-autism-science-foundation-ted-style-autism-science-conference-registration-39878706284

Articles used in this podcast:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29500758

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5660229/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29455555

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Commonly used drugs that may help autism

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Sometimes treatment targets come from the places you wouldn’t expect.  This week, three new studies on the biological and sometimes, behavioral, effects of three commonly used compounds used to treat high cholesterol, edema, and angina were studied in people with autism.  Instead of focusing on just the behavior however, these studies took the approach of examining them from the behavioral side, determining if there was a biological reason why these compounds should be helping people with autism.  This means autism research has turned a corner – it’s not just about behavioral improvements, but about how the drug is working in the brain.  Also, a fun study about social media in people with autism.  They don’t just use it like the rest of us, it actually makes people with autism happy.

Here are the studies included in this week’s podcast:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29485900

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29484909

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29484149

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29483603

 

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What is true for males is not true for females

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This week’s podcast focuses on the Extreme Male Brain Theory of autism, originating from the idea that autism, in part, is a reflection of increased fetal testosterone levels.  Amazingly, fetal testosterone levels are reflected in the length of the 2nd and 4th fingers and can be measured as a reflection of testosterone levels during pregnancy. Research, including those from a recent CDC study, have reinforced that elevated fetal testosterone levels play a role in autism in males, but not females.  Differences in fetal testosterone across gender and diagnosis has also been observed in a study from Drexel University.  What was observed in males is not observed in females.  It doesn’t mean the theory is wrong, it means that what is true for one sex is not always true for the other.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29450837

 

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Another groundbreaking study thanks to brain tissue

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The media accurately described a recent study from Dan Geschwind’s lab at UCLA as “groundbreaking”.  That’s because the findings help people with autism better understand how and why their symptoms are different to other mental conditions, specifically bipolar depression and schizophrenia.  It turns out the gene expression patterns in the brains of people with autism are similar to those with bipolar depression and schizophrenia, but not alcoholism or major depression.   It also offers hope for a more accurate biological signature of autism that can be distinguished from bipolar depression and schizophrenia.    Below is a graph that represents these different profiles, and if you want to read a version of the article that is available online (but before it was peer reviewed in the journal Science) you can find it here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/02/18/040022.full.pdf Gandal

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An ode to rats as animal models for autism

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This week, the lab of Dr. Jill Silverman at UC Davis published a study that showed the most similar types of social communication deficits in an animal model.  Her group, led by Elizabeth Berg, used a rat model, rather than a mouse, because rats exhibit both receptive and expressive communication.  Through a collaboration within the UC Davis MIND Institute and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, she tested an animal model of autism that shows a lack of expression of SHANK3.  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.   The references mentioned in the podcast are:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29377611

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29126394

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27189882

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The causes of social communication deficits in ASD

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This week, former ASF fellow Katherine Stavropoulos from UC Riverside and Leslie Carver published data investigating what is the core cause of social communication deficits in autism.  Do people with autism show deficits in this area because they have a lack of motivation for social cues, or are social interactions just too overwhelming on their senses?  It turns out, both are true and this has direct implications for intervention methods.  Also, parents and siblings of people with autism show subtle symptoms of ASD without having a diagnosis.  This is called the broader autism phenotype, and a study by the Study to Explore Early Development led by Dr. Eric Rubenstein, demonstrated that parents of children with a particular group of symptoms are more likely to show this phenotype than other groupings.  You can read the full studies here:

 

https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-018-0189-5

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29376397

 

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What is the can do vs. the will do of autism?

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Often overlooked in intervention studies, it is becoming increasingly clearer that adaptive behavior, the “will do” vs. the “can do” of functioning, should receive more focus.  In people with autism and high IQ, cognitive ability, the “can do” is higher than adaptive behavior, the “will do”.  Why?  The key in new research from the National Institutes of Health may be social abilities.  Another study this week from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in adult  with high IQ demonstrates that social motivation may be the key to improving social skills and socialization in people with ASD.