Simple Screens

In the not-too-distant future, we may be able to diagnose toddlers with autism using a simple clinical test — based on voice patterns, blood or even urine.

The first behavioral signs of autism don’t show up until a child is about a year old, and the disorder often isn’t diagnosed until age 2 or 3. This is an important problem, for the sooner the child can begin behavioral interventions and speech therapy, the better.

One group has developed machines that detect distinctive voice patterns in children with autism. Others are finding autism-specific profiles of gene expression in blood.

Read more at…

SFARI, August 2010.

About these ads

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s