With the numbers of American austistic children on the rise, researchers are working hard at finding what it is, how or if it can be medicated and why it occurs. Now, a large study has opened a small window into some of that.
In one of the largest studies into the cause of autism, the Autism Genome Project consortium has come up with some surprising findings. Nature magazine's blog reports that the consortium found that people born with autism have more segments of DNA that have been either duplicated or deleted in their genes.
The hope is that such results could eventually be used to come up with quick diagnostic tests. The Consortium also was able to group some of the affected genes into biochemical pathways, some of which were linked to the brain's functioning. It is thought that this finding might be useful to scientists looking to create drugs to treat autism.
The Voice of America reports that in the study, scientists from eleven countries compared the genes of nearly 1,000 autistic children to 1,300 children without the condition. A finding that may relieve some parents of autistic children was that not only did the youngsters have rare genetic differences, but those variations were not shared by their parents, and were not inherited.
Stanley Nelson, a professor of human genetics at the University of California in Los Angeles, a co-author of the study says,
The hope is that such results could eventually be used to come up with quick diagnostic tests. The Consortium also was able to group some of the affected genes into biochemical pathways, some of which were linked to the brain's functioning. It is thought that this finding might be useful to scientists looking to create drugs to treat autism.
Stanley Nelson, a professor of human genetics at the University of California in Los Angeles, a co-author of the study says,
"While the mutations make individuals more susceptible to autism, the genetic abnormalities do not automatically mean someone will have the disorder."
Nelson says they did not find an association between the number of genetic insertions and deletions and the severity of autism. And he says scientists really need to conduct a bigger study decoding the genes discovered in this one. He says,
"Each child who's affected has some genetic information in their genome that we would like to learn from. And that's the quickest route to try and dissolve [solve] the riddle that is autism."
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