Autism stems from a complex and, so far, baffling interaction of genetic and environmental factors. New research suggests one of those factors may be a pregnant woman’s immune response to virus infection ― and perhaps to a flu shot.

Since the 1950s, more than a dozen epidemiological studies have suggested that a pregnant woman’s exposure to influenza directly increases her child’s risk of developing schizophrenia.

In 2002, mouse models offered a possible mechanism: that viral infection activates the mother’s immune system, producing proteins that disrupt the fetal brain’s normal development¹.

Because of the similarities between schizophrenia and autism, some experts say prenatal infection may also be linked to autism.

“The bottom line is that environmental factors such as insults during pregnancy, in animals with a genetic background that’s very clear-cut, can produce abnormalities in the gene array, the anatomy of the brain, the chemistry of the brain, and finally behavior,” says University of Minnesota neuropsychiatrist S. Hossein Fatemi. “You may be able to explain some aspects of the genesis of autism by using such animal models.”

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SFARI, April 2008.

The eyes, so goes the ancient proverb, are the window to the soul. Sophisticated machines that track vision suggest that eyes may also be the window to autism.

In the fall of 2002, clinicians at the Yale Child Study Center were testing 15-month-old Helen for developmental disorders. For most of her life, Helen had developed normally: smiling, then crawling, then walking, even saying a handful of words. But when she was about a year old, she stopped speaking. She stopped bringing things to her parents, and ignored new people.

Her parents were especially worried because Helen’s 3-year-old brother had been diagnosed with autism a year earlier. Their fears for their daughter were confirmed: after a battery of cognitive and behavioral tests, the specialists at Yale found that Helen, too, is autistic.

In a way, Helen’s visit was “serendipitous,” says Ami Klin, a psychologist at the center. At the time, clinicians rarely saw an autistic child younger than age 2 or 3, so Helen provided a rare research opportunity.

Klin and his colleague, Warren Jones, began observing the way Helen looked at people. In one experiment, they used infrared cameras mounted on a baseball cap to track her precise eye movements as she watched a video of a cooing woman’s face. Unlike typical babies, Helen focused much more on the woman’s mouth than on her eyes.

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SFARI, April 2008.