Autism

April 2nd is Autism Day

April 2nd is Autism Day and all of April is Autism Month. The recent increase of diagnosis of Autism poses a huge challenge to families and a great burden to society. Thousands of highly qualified people, from activist parents, to researchers, to therapists and innovators are hard at work looking for ways to help the children (and now also adults with ASD), and try to find the causes and effective solutions. While ABM NeuroMovement® is not the full solution, it  has  been able to help, in significant ways, many children with this challenge. Anat Baniel has written a first out of a series of articles/blogs providing parents, therapists and others with new ways of thinking about Autism and offering some tools to implement in daily life.

Read Anat Baniels  blog here

autism-ribbon

by Norma Desmond

Image: Norma Desmond

The incidence of autism spectrum disorders is rising in the United States, and the latest estimates reveal one in 68 American children is affected.In 2012, the rate of incidence was one in 88.

 
New findings released March 27 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, include data collected by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers who lead the Alabama Autism Surveillance project, a part of the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges. The ADDM Network data help the CDC direct research into potential risk factors and help communities direct outreach efforts to those who need it most.

“We are confident that some of this increase is due to increased awareness and access to services; however, those issues don’t explain all of the increase,” Martha Wingate, Dr.PH, director of the AASP and associate professor in the UAB School of Public Health, said of the data, which were collected at 11 ADDM sites during the 2010 surveillance year.

“Our study focuses on providing an estimate of children affected to help with policy development and planning for medical providers and schools, but other researchers are working hard to figure out why there is an increase,” Wingate said. “Some studies are looking at paternal age, preterm birth and other factors; but there is not one cause.”

In Alabama, the number of 8-year-olds identified was one in 175 children, compared with one in 303 in 2002. Wingate says this is lower than at some other ADDM sites, but it’s still an increase of more than 70 percent.

The study also found approximately one in 42 boys and one in 189 girls living in the ADDM Network communities were identified as having ASD. Non-Hispanic white children were approximately 30 percent more likely to be identified with ASD than were non-Hispanic black children, and they were almost 50 percent more likely to be identified with ASD than were Hispanic children.

“Our biggest focus continues to be on recognizing the signs and symptoms of autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities and getting children access to services early,” Wingate said. “The CDC’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” campaign is focused on educating providers and parents about the importance of recognizing developmental delays and getting children into the appropriate services.”

boy looking for help

© iStockphoto

Children with a genetic disorder called 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, who frequently are believed to also have autism, often may be misidentified because the social impairments associated with their developmental delay may mimic the features of autism, a study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute suggests.

The study is the first to examine autism in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, in whom the prevalence of autism has been reported at between 20 and 50 percent, using rigorous gold-standard diagnostic criteria. The research found that none of the children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome “met strict diagnostic criteria” for autism.

The researchers said the finding is important because treatments designed for children with autism, such as widely used discrete-trial training methods, may exacerbate the anxiety that is commonplace among the population….read more

ᔥUC Davis Health Sysytem

University of North Carolina School of Medicine
 
Autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may share common underlying factors, study suggests

New research led by a medical geneticist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine points to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) among individuals whose parents or siblings have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

The findings were based on a case-control study using population registers in Sweden and Israel, and the degree to which these three disorders share a basis in causation “has important implications for clinicians, researchers and those affected by the disorders,” according to a report of the research published online July 2, 2012 in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“The results were very consistent in large samples from several different countries and lead us to believe that autism and schizophrenia are more similar than we had thought,” said Patrick F. Sullivan, MD,
FRANZCP, professor in the department of genetics and director of psychiatric genomics at UNC.

Sullivan and colleagues found that the presence of schizophrenia in parents was associated with an almost three times increased risk for ASD in groups from both Stockholm and all of Sweden.
Schizophrenia in a sibling also was associated with roughly two and a half times the risk for autism in the Swedish national group and a 12 times greater risk in a sample of Israeli military conscripts. The authors speculate that the latter finding from Israel resulted from individuals with earlier onset schizophrenia, “which has a higher sibling recurrence.”
Bipolar disorder showed a similar pattern of association but of a lesser magnitude, study results indicate.
Our findings suggest that ASD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share etiologic risk factors,” the authors state. “We suggest that future research could usefully attempt to discern risk factors common to these disorders.”

Study co-authors with Sullivan are Cecilia Magnusson, MD,PhD, Christina M. Hultman, PhD, Niklas Langstrom, MD, PhD, Paul Lichtenstein, PhD, Marcus Bowman, BS, Christina Dalman, MD, PhD, Anna C. Svensson, PhD and Michael Lundberg, MPH, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Abraham Reichenberg, PhD, Kings College, London, England; Michael Davidson MD, and Mark Weiser, MD, Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, Israel; Eyal Fruchter, MD Israeli Defense Force Medical Corp, Ramat Gan, Israel.
The study was funded in part by The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, the Swedish Research Council and the Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation.