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FULL TITLE: Autism breakthrough as 'genetic signature' in babies as young as a year found; blood test in the works A GENETIC "signature" of autism in babies as young as 12 months has been identified for the first time, an international conference is to be told. A simple blood test is now being developed and may be available in one to two years, Professor Eric Courchesne will tell the Asia Pacific Autism conference in Adelaide today. "This discovery really changes the landscape of our understanding of causes and effective treatments," says the director of the Autism Centre of Excellence at...

July 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Swedish study has found that children conceived with a certain type of in vitro fertilization (IVF) have a 51 percent increased risk of intellectual impairment – defined as an IQ score below 70. They also linked the procedure to a small increased risk for autism in cases of twins and triplets. Scientists studied data from 2.5 million births, and found the heightened risk in cases of babies conceived by a process in which the sperm is injected directly into the mother’s egg, known as Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). ICSI is used typically to...

Hey, I don’t know what you’ve been up to today, but if it’s feeling good about America in general, well, probably time to stop. Jenny McCarthy is joining The View. Before I get into this, a quick disclaimer: I haven’t ever actually watched The View, although I did read Wikipedia’s article “The View (U.S. TV Series)” from which I learned that the show features “mostly five women.” (Said article has a helpful if byzantine chart detailing which woman had which seat and for what time period. It’s cool, I guess, if that’s what you’re into.) I also should let you...

Enlarge Image Monkey business. Young rhesus monkeys that receive human antibrain antibodies in utero act oddly in social situations. Credit: Nancy Collins/Creative Commons "Antibrain" antibodies that slip through the placenta from mother to fetus during pregnancy may account for roughly a quarter of autism cases, a new study suggests. Some scientists say the work could lead to a blood test that accurately predicts whether a mother will bear a child with this immune-triggered form of the disorder—a claim that's raising eyebrows among skeptics. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a range of communication and social deficits estimated to affect 1 in...

An Ellington mother is upset after her son, who suffers from autism, was denied access to the swimming pool at a country club because he requires a flotation vest. Cristin Millen told Eyewitness News her 8-year-old son, Aiden Robert, was denied access to the Ellington Ridge Country Club. According to Millen, she signed up for a membership at Ellington Ridge Country Club and told them that Aiden Robert had autism and was required to wear a life jacket. Millen said she asked officials at the country club to check to make sure that was OK. When her husband Kevin called...

Pregnant women exposed to high levels of air pollution are up to twice as likely to have a child with autism as women who lived in areas with low pollution, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Researchers looked at data going back to 1989 about 325 women who had a child with autism and 22,000 women who had a child without the disorder, then correlated that with pollutant levels at the time and place of birth and how much exposure the women would have had. In areas where diesel particulates or mercury in...

Researchers seeking the roots of autism have linked the disorder to chemicals in air pollution and, in a separate study, found that language difficulties of the disorder may be due to a disconnect in brain wiring.Researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that pregnant women exposed to high levels of diesel particulates or mercury were twice as likely to have an autistic child compared with peers in low-pollution areas. The findings, published Tuesday in Environmental Health Perspectives, are from the largest U.S. study to examine the ties between air pollution and autism.One in 50 U.S. children are diagnosed...

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "poison" as "a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed." The legal definition of the term is "any product or substance that can harm someone if it is used in the wrong way, by the wrong person, or in the wrong amount." The medical condition of poisoning is even broader: It can be caused by substances that are not even legally required to carry the label "poison." Therefore, can food become poisonous? Of course it can if it is infected, tampered with or altered...

The Kennedy family name is laden with history and brings to mind a definite set of characteristics: glamor, power, intelligence, wealth, influence. Kennedys have had their name on a president, numerous senators, representatives, ambassadors, and other high office holders. The Kennedy dynasty, if you wish to call it that, has seen its share of triumphs and disasters, of course. I need not go into detail; scores of books have been written about them, from putting humans on the Moon and the championing of civil rights to personal tragedies of assassination, death, scandal, and more. Most of these issues are in...

A new study may stimulate the old adage of respecting your elders; it says the general level of intelligence in the Western Hemisphere has declined since the Victorian Era. The study claims the IQ numbers are 14 points lower than from the 19th century. One of the authors of the study, Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, says the cause of the movement toward stupidity is that smarter women have fewer children while those of lower intelligence have more children. But Dr. Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology and developmental biology at...

German software development giant SAP plans to hire hundreds of people with autism by 2020. The company hopes to benefit from their unusual skillset and says it's ready for any practical challenges. Advocates hope the program could set an example for others. The Berlin IT firm Auticon contracts people with autism to work as consultants, mainly in the software industry. Autism impairs social and emotional communication, but can also be associated with extraordinary talent for analysis. Quincke facilitates a way to both utilize these strengths and integrate the workers into a professional setting. Now, German software development giant SAP has...

Abstract: Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, is the most popular herbicide used worldwide. The industry asserts it is minimally toxic to humans, but here we argue otherwise. Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate's inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and...

That’s the opinion of Fehmi Kaya, head of the Health and Education Associations for Autistic Children in Adana, Turkey. Autistic children are atheists, he said, “due to a lack of a section for faith in their brains.” From TimeTurk (English edition) 4/22/13: “Autistic children do not know believing in God because they do not have a section of faith in their brains,” Kaya said, according to daily Milliyet. Kaya said the underdevelopment of faith sections in the brain caused autistic children to not believe in God. “That is why they don’t know how to pray, how to believe in God....

Scientists from King's College London have identified patterns of epigenetic changes involved in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by studying genetically identical twins who differ in autism traits. The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, is the largest of its kind and may shed light on the biological mechanism by which environmental influences regulate the activity of certain genes and in turn contribute to the development of ASD and related behaviour traits. ASD affects approximately 1 in 100 people in the UK and involves a spectrum of disorders which manifest themselves differently in different people. People with ASD have varying levels of...

I have a question for those of you in the education and medical fields. A friend of mine was talking about the struggles her mother had (who suffered from Alzheimer's) with communicating. I have worked with several children who had Autism, and they too had difficulty communicating. One thing we do to help children with Autism communicate is to use picture boards and other visual cues. Does anybody know if this type of thing is used to help Alzheimer's patients communicate??

A first-ever vaccine created by University of Guelph researchers for gut bacteria common in autistic children may also help control some autism symptoms. The groundbreaking study by Brittany Pequegnat and Guelph chemistry professor Mario Monteiro appears this month in the journal Vaccine. They developed a carbohydrate-based vaccine against the gut bug Clostridium bolteae. C. bolteae is known to play a role in gastrointestinal disorders, and it often shows up in higher numbers in the GI tracts of autistic children than in those of healthy kids. More than 90 per cent of children with autism spectrum disorders suffer from chronic, severe...

Had this crime been perpetrated by a roving band of evangelicals who object to scientific treatment of autism and schizophrenia, you might have heard a lot about it this week. As it is, that would never happen, and it was animal-rights activists who did the damage. Will the reputation of their cause and mainstream activists have to contend with their actions? Activists occupied an animal facility at the University of Milan, Italy, at the weekend, releasing mice and rabbits and mixing up cage labels to confuse experimental protocols. Researchers at the university say that it will take years to recover...

The co-author of a book on partisan science recently examined by Pacific Standard argues that our reviewer was a little too partisan himself. Any book that touches upon politics almost automatically angers half of the American public, regardless of what is written inside of it. It takes a special person—an objective, open-minded and self-critical one—to read and learn from a science book that criticizes people with whom the reader likes and agrees with politically.Recently, Pacific Standard published a review (“Red Science, Blue Science,” January/February 2013) by Wray Herbert, a pop psychology writer,of political writer Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain...

A local Chili's restaurant in Midvale, Utah, might have made the grave mistake of "breaking" one little girl's cheeseburger by cutting it in half, but the waitress, manager and line cooks more than made up for it Sunday when they presented her with a brand new "fixed" one. Seven-year-old Arianna Hill is autistic and she loves cheeseburgers. But apparently, ones that are cut in half just won't do. "We just decided we were going to get some lunch before we were taking her to see the Easter bunny," Arianna's older sister, Anna MacLean, 25, told ABCNews.com. However,when Arianna's burger was...

A mother says she is devastated, after hidden cameras captured caregivers physically abusing her adult disabled son. “It’s hard for me to forgive myself that I took my son and put him in their hand, like you take your son to hell,” Kathy Coleman says. Caregivers were recorded by hidden cameras kicking and punching her son Cameron, stomping on his face, spitting on him, whipping him with a chain and threatening him, possibly even shooting him with a pellet gun. “My son is sick. Does he deserve this?” Coleman asks. Cameron is a 31-year-old man with autism. He doesn’t speak...