Spectrum: Autism Research News

Young adults with autism are more likely than those with other developmental disabilities to choose to study science and engineering.

Two healthcare organizations have pooled their data to create a registry of 20,000 people with autism, a resource that may help speed up clinical trials and other research.

Evidence for the benefit of behavioral treatments for autism is modest at best, according to a systematic review published 1 November in Pediatrics.

A new candidate gene for autism, CHD8, may account for up to 0.4 percent of cases of the disorder, according to research published today in Science. CHD8 is one of six genes identified that together may contribute to one percent of autism cases.

Life for most New Yorkers is getting back to normal after the unprecedented destruction caused last week by Hurricane Sandy, but researchers at New York University face a painful and painstaking recovery.

Papers that are turned down by one journal and end up being published by another are cited significantly more often than papers accepted by the first-choice journal, according to an analysis published 12 October in Science.

Girls with Asperger syndrome are diagnosed, on average, two years later than boys, and the delay is even worse among adults with classic autism, according to a large study in the Netherlands published 22 September in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Flooding from Hurricane Sandy has destroyed a major rodent colony at New York University. But most of the strains are also housed elsewhere, so researchers should be able to rebuild their collections.

People with autism are twice as likely as controls to have mutations that disable both copies of a gene, according to preliminary research presented Wednesday at the Autism Consortium Research Symposium in Boston.

The research and advocacy organization Autism Speaks plans to launch a nonprofit arm that will fund companies to develop treatments for the disorder, Robert Ring, head of translational research for the organization, announced yesterday at the Autism Consortium Research Symposium in Boston.