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Understanding the hard to research

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What do Princess Kate and Amy Schumer have in common, and what does it have to do with autism?  The answer:  Hyperemesis Gravidum.  It’s linked to autism, but not strongly, but it does show more evidence of significant overlap between many neuropsychiatric issues and disorders.

More importantly though, those with low verbal ability and low cognitive function are harder to study than most people with autism.  Two new research studies documented what they had to do to make studies in this population possible, and how this group was different from those with average IQ and some words.  One looked at brain structure, and the other was a treatment for minimally verbal girls with autism.

The HG study:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30594672

The minimally verbal girls study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30607780 

The imaging study:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6307191/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6307191/

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Memorial Day Memoriam: Isabelle Rapin

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This week, autism lost a pioneer and advocate for autism research:  Isabelle Rapin, MD, a neurologist from New York’s Albert Einstein University.  The first part of the podcast is a brief summary of her accomplishments.  The second part is an study called “how to keep your child out of the hospital”, presenting a recent study which looked at risk factors for being an inpatient, rather than an outpatient.    These risk factors may not be able to be prevented, but hopefully through identification of what they are, situations might be managed to help those with autism and their families during a crisis situation.