Genome-Wide Study Fingers First Common Risk Factors for Autism

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.