In families that have more than one child with autism, children who are born later have lower intelligence scores than their older siblings do, according to research published 11 November in PLoS ONE.
Microglia, brain cells that are part of the immune system, are more activated in the brains of young men with autism than in controls, according to an imaging study published 26 November in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Mitochondrial deficits may account for the range of symptoms and neurological deficits seen in autism and explain why it preferentially affects boys, says Douglas Wallace.
Children with autism have higher levels than controls of dendritic cells, a subset of immune cells, according to a study published 11 October in Brain Behavior and Immunity.
Women who have the flu while pregnant double their risk of having a child with autism, according to a large study published 12 November in Pediatrics. The results add to growing evidence of a connection between maternal infection and autism.
Children with a deletion in the 22q11.2 chromosomal region have one of two distinct sets of symptoms, and only one of those is associated with autism, according to a study published 28 August in Research in Developmental Disabilities.
Rare antibodies taken from mothers of children with autism lead to developmental delay and anxiety in mouse pups, according to a study published 27 August in the Journal of Neuroimmunology.
Mice with elevated levels of the immune molecule interleukin-6 have abnormally large brains, according to a study published 23 August in the International Journal of Neuroscience.
Children diagnosed with autism tend to have low blood levels of several immune molecules at birth, according to an epidemiological study published in August in the Journal of Immunology.
Prenatal exposure to antibodies collected from the mothers of children with autism boosts stem cell proliferation in the brains of mice, according to two studies presented at the 2012 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in New Orleans.