A new clinical trial, conducted entirely online, could provide a model for how to quickly and efficiently test some potential treatments for autism.

A consortium of autism researchers, advocates and educators in Rhode Island are aiming to harness the advantages of the state’s small size and tight-knit autism community to build the most comprehensive registry for the disorder yet.

The nation’s largest database of autism research is about to get even bigger, thanks to a partnership between the National Database for Autism Research, a repository of data from 25,000 participants, and the Autism Genetic Research Exchange, a database of 2,500 families.

Depression in mothers of children with autism may not be a consequence of their child’s condition, but of their own genetic profile, says a provocative new study.

Racial minorities are under-represented in genetic studies, in part because research guidelines do not account for differences in family structure, according to a report based on statistics from several autism gene banks. In response to the report, research teams at Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles, are revamping their recruitment practices.

Toddlers who abruptly lose language, social or other developmental skills are more likely to have severe autism a few years later compared with children who have consistent delays from an early age. That’s the conclusion of the largest study thus far of autism onset patterns, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.