Brain Scan Can Detect Autism In Infants 166
kkleiner writes "A new study shows that brain scans can detect autism in children as young as 6 months old. Researchers at University of North Carolina's Institute for Developmental Disabilities imaged the brains of 92 children who were at high risk for autism. Scans were performed when the children were 6 months, 1-year, and 2-years old. At 2 years, the age when children are typically diagnosed, 30 percent of the children were found to have autism. The researchers then compared the brain images of the autistic children with the others. They saw differences in the brain's white matter, the axon-laden pathways that transmit electrical signals to distant parts of the brain. Of the 15 pathways analyzed, 12 were significantly different between autistic and non-autistic children."
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:4, Interesting)
Phenylketonuria and celiacs are both very common with autism. By carefully controlling the diet at a younger age many behaviors might be curbed or avoided altogether. With this as with all medical conditions, the earlier you know the better.
Re:Not early enough. (Score:3, Interesting)
You know one child that is autistic but extremely high-functioning. First, is he really hardcore autistic, or just some book-smart kid with poor social skills who was diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder to make excuses for genetic weakness and/or poor parenting? Did mommy spend all her time socializing, working, and trying to lose the baby weight; or did she actually try to bond with the baby? Did she breast-feed the baby? Did the parents care more about their careers and just delegate caretaking duties to some cold, uncaring maid?
Now, disregard the cause. Alternately, was the family affluent enough to be able to throw a gang of high-priced specialists and tools at the child? Did they have the luxury of being able to dedicate more time to the child than other working families? So the child knows about stuff - but what are his idiosyncracies? Can s/he function and relate to their peers? Do they break out in screaming fits? Does the child show signs of hebephrenia or catatonia at times? Food for thought.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, this seems to be just the latest in research that has been coming out in the last few years that seem to add to the evidence that autism onset is really early or preterm.
For instance, that this paper that came out in 2005 [ucsd.edu] attempted to more systematically document the early signs of autism by using a longitudinal study which comparing a set of high risk infants (who had an older sibling diagnosed w/ some ASD), with a control set at 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months.
Of course today, autism is defined in terms of behavior. The key is the origin or eitology of autism. Is this odd brain scan an indicator of the origin, or is it something else and this is merely correlated. Nobody knows.
However, we do seem to have strong indication of certain specific chromosomal problems that can lead to autistic behavior: FragileX, Rett Syndrome, and Tuberous Sclerosis. Fragile X and Rett's are X chromosome related. This is suspiciously related to the observation that incidence of ASD are higher in boys and boys only have 1 "X" chromosome. TS is not X related, but can cause calcium deposits to develop in the brain or in some cases tuber-like growths in the brain (as special case, since tuber-like growths occur all over the body w/ this condition).
Because of the accumulated research, many people speculate that there are actually many pathways to autistic behaviour. You might even think of autism as a symptom of many diseases and conditions (like a cough is a symptom of many diseases), so many experts are not optimistic that will be a "cure" for autism, but perhaps in the future there will be a way in some situations to blunt the symptoms early enough to avoid many of the problems in many of the common cases.
Reality is often much more complicated that the headlines.
Re:Not early enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
heya,
You do realise that's the sort of rhetoric that only brainwashed religious nutjobs spout, right?
I'm definitely not 100% comfortable with advocating open season for abortions, and I think it's a tragedy whenever it happen, but to declare moral equivalence between abortions and shooting a child is a logical fallacy that only an idiot or a self-deluded fool could commit.
Look, I don't know if you're ever actually worked with autistic kids. I don't mean movie-style Rain Man style, but an actual real flesh and blood kid, complete with temper tantrums, screaming and violent outbursts. If it was your kid, I'm sure you'd still love them, but I can see why some parents would crack.
I used to help teach special needs kids, and on the bad days, even those couple hours a week could be seriously draining.
And also, many of these have a genetic factor - so it's just like hereditary diabetes - the incident rate today is going up, simply because people with the genes are living longer, and having more kids. Diabetes - sure, you can argue it's not a huge deal if you pass it onto all your kids, but other things, like say Huttingtons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington's_disease), if I knew I was a carrier, I'd think twice before having my own biological children (there are alternatives to abortion, believe it or not).
Cheers,
Victor
Re:Not early enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
We're not talking about Aspergers, the highest-functioning and probably most abused disability diagnosis aside of ADD (shit, I feel ADD right now. Can I get some Adderall and have an extra 4 hours to take that test? It's the new affirmative action! )
We're discussing pure autism, and for somebody who claims to have a remarkably high IQ, you're pretty ignorant and have no personality or style. You reek of a pseudo-intellectual who can use 4-syllable words. But you're not a special snowflake, and your disability and/or parents' money will get you into that school of choice.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Re:Not early enough. (Score:2, Interesting)
Pray tell, how do we reconcile your alleged intelligence with your inability to write a post that's not marred by multiple grammatical errors?