Archives for the month of: April, 2009
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Un-common Discovery

April 30, 2009 //
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You’ve probably noticed that newsstands everywhere are covering a huge breakthrough in autism: the discovery of the first common genetic risk variants for autism.

The study — by far the biggest to date — pinned six variants, all nestled between two genes on chromosome 5.

Adding even more grist to the mill, another study released yesterday also pointed to this region. Scanning about 900 families, that study found eight genetic variants that are more common in family members with autism than in their healthy kin. And again, all eight variants sit — you guessed it — in that same hot spot on chromosome 5.

The immediately obvious question is: what exactly are those variants doing there?

Read more at…

SFARI, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Autism, Blogging, Genetics, Health and Medicine, SFARI

Genome-Wide Study Fingers First Common Risk Factors for Autism

April 28, 2009 //
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Autism results from a diverse mix of common and rare genetic variants, many of which act in pathways that form and maintain connections between neurons. That’s the message from the largest genome-wide association studies of autism to date, published online today in Nature.

One of the two new studies, which screened more than 10,000 people, for the first time identifies a cluster of common variants — defined as mutations that occur in five percent or more of the general population — that are more prevalent in people with autism than in healthy controls.

Read more at…

SFARI, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Autism, Genetics, Health and Medicine, News, SFARI

Sleep On It

April 24, 2009 //
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Most kids with autism have trouble sleeping — whether that’s difficulty falling asleep, or waking up many times during the night.

For that sizable group, here’s some welcome news: melatonin, the over-the-counter food supplement that some travelers use to shake jet lag, may help children with autism fall asleep faster, according to a report published last week.

Read more at…

SFARI, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Autism, Blogging, Brain Science, Health and Medicine, SFARI

Risky Business

April 22, 2009 //
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The four major hurricanes that hit U.S. coasts in 2004 cost insurance companies an unprecedented $23 billion. That record was short-lived. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina alone brought $50 billion in insured losses, and claims are still being filed.

Most of the scientific community agrees that recent global warming influenced the severity of these storms, and has led to a host of other ecological problems, like flooding and forest fires. More alarming, the warming trend will probably continue well into the next century.

But according to two recent reports, American insurance companies aren’t giving enough consideration to the future effects of global warming.

Read more at…

Plenty, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Business and Technology, Features, Plenty, Politics

In for Blood

April 20, 2009 //
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Civil rights groups in Minnesota and Texas are fighting their state governments in some of the first legal battles over newborn blood screening.

Every newborn, at nearly any hospital worldwide, is put through a standard screening procedure within a few hours of birth. Doctors prick the infant’s heel, and a few drops of blood are screened for rare diseases, anonymized, stored and, sometimes, given to scientific researchers. These samples have proven invaluable to scientists who are studying the basis of complex psychiatric disorders, including autism.

But here’s where this gets ethically and legally sticky: newborn blood screening, at least in most U.S. states, happens automatically, often without the parents knowing about it, let alone consenting to it. According to an article in Science earlier this month, the lawsuits claim that taking and storing blood without the parents’ explicit consent violates privacy rights.

Read more at…

SFARI, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Autism, Blogging, Health and Medicine, Politics, SFARI

Unmasking Schizophrenia

April 15, 2009 //
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The word schizophrenia comes from the Greek skhizein, meaning ‘to split’ and phren, which means ‘mind’.

Schizophrenia now refers to the apparent separation of memory, thinking and perceptual abilities that trigger a disjointed personality in those with the disorder. But this split may also grant those individuals unusual abilities.

The disconnection between what the eyes see and what the brain perceives may be the reason that people with schizophrenia aren’t fooled by some visual illusions, according to a new study published in March in NeuroImage.

Read more at…

SFARI, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Blogging, Brain Science, Health and Medicine, SFARI

Gavin Schmidt: Global Warming Guru

April 14, 2009 //
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Al Gore makes it look easy, but understanding the finer points of global warming is hard. For a little more than two years, RealClimate has offered meaty posts about the latest research and controversy in climate news, written by 11 climate scientists. Plenty chatted with NASA atmospheric scientist Gavin Schmidt, one of the blog’s founders, about how his field is covered—by Hollywood, Congress, and the popular press.

Read more at…

Plenty, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Earth and Space, Ecology, Plenty, Politics, Profiles

Ethnic Labels

April 8, 2009 //
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With World Autism Awareness Day just behind us, it seems fitting to me to ask: is autism more common among children of some ethnicities than in others?

Last fall, I wrote about a mysterious cluster of autism among Somali children in Minnesota. At the time, the Minneapolis school system reported that although Somalis make up just 6 percent of the city’s public school population, they comprise 17 percent of the special education students labeled ‘autistic’.

Public health clusters are usually suspect, but in a report released last week, the Minnesota Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that, among 3- and 4-year-old children, those of Somali origin are two to seven times more likely to be placed in preschool programs for autism. The report also found other ethnic trends in these classes: just two Asians and one Native American between 2005 and 2007.

Read more at…

SFARI, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Autism, Blogging, Health and Medicine, SFARI

Blueprint for Autism Research Put Forward

April 7, 2009 //
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After a year of gathering input from top scientists and vocal public advocates, a US federal government advisory panel has released a blueprint of priorities for autism research.

Read more at…

Nature Medicine, April 2009.

Categories 2009, Autism, Health and Medicine, Nature Medicine, News In Brief, Politics
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