Abnormal Brain Growth Seen in Children with Fragile X

Brains of children with fragile X syndrome go through an abnormal trajectory of development in the first few years of life, according to the first study to track how the disease unfolds in the brain. The findings were published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Fragile X syndrome — a genetic disease that causes mental retardation and often autism — results from the complete loss of fragile X mental retardation protein, or FMRP, which is important for many brain processes. By comparing children with the syndrome and healthy controls, the new findings present a picture of when and where FMRP is expressed during early development."This is beautiful work," says April Benasich, director of the Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University, who was not involved in the study. "The ability to link individual differences in the structure of the brain to some genetic precursor is extremely powerful."Read more at...SFARI, July 2010.