Immune Activation Triggers Autism Features in Mice

Mice carrying an autism-associated mutation show impaired social interactions and dramatic changes in brain size when their immune systems are activated, according to research presented yesterday at a poster session at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.The work presents one of the first examples of a gene-environment interaction in autism.Since the early 1970s, epidemiologists have noticed that the rates of schizophrenia and autism are higher in women who contract influenza or rubella during pregnancy. Neuroscientists have also noticed high amounts of inflammation in post-mortem samples of autistic brains. Most recently, scientists have reported that children with autism tend to have a family history of autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis."I think any one of these pieces [of evidence] can be severely criticized but, together, it seems like something's going on," says Damon Page, a post-doctoral fellow in Mriganka Sur's laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Read more at...SFARI, October 2009.