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Link between sibling spacing and autism risk
A study published yesterday in the journal Pediatrics reports a surprising finding about autism risk within families: when a second child is born too close to the older sibling, the incidence of autism goes up.
It’s a result that surprised researchers, but the population of California children studied was very large — more than a half-million — and the effect remained even after other risk factors like age of the parents were taken into consideration.
The study found that children born less than two years after their older sibling were considerably more likely to be diagnosed with autism than those who were born at least three years after their older sibling.
Here’s why the researchers say closely-spaced kids could be at higher risk for autism:
A possible link between air pollutants and autism has been discovered
While the debate about vaccines and their link to autism has died down significantly, get ready for a new one to flare up.
Researchers at the Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are warning that environmental factors could possibly play a role in autism. New findings seem to indicate that babies who lived within 1,000 feet of a freeway (but not a major road) were found to be at risk because of their exposure to pollutants inherent to that type of throughway.
The study, which was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), examined 304 children with autism and 259 without. Likewise, a similar study in 2006 in the San Francisco area found that babies born to women exposed to industrial air contaminants while they were pregnant were 50 percent more likely to have autism. Autism is a developmental disorder that affects the brain’s normal development of social and communications skills, and appears in the first few years of life.
Gender bias in autism diagnosis?
A study in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology finds that boys are more likely to be given a diagnosis of autism, even when their symptoms are equal to those of their girl peers.
The research looked at long-term data in the UK, assessing children’s symptoms, social factors, and official medical diagnoses. They found that even when girls had severe symptoms of autism, they were less likely to receive the right psychiatric diagnosis.
We know that boys are more than four times as likely to have a diagnosis of autism, and they are also more likely to have symptoms that put them on the “severe” end of the spectrum. But in this study, girls with equally severe symptoms were not acknowledged.
Why is this? Continue reading »
Danish researchers link jaundice and autism.
Dr. Susan Hyman, a pediatrician and autism expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center, says that it is becoming increasingly clear that autism and related disorders are not one disease but a collection of “similar symptoms caused by different things, stemming from a complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors.”
And the more researchers delve into the causes of autism, the more mysterious it seems to become. But according to Byran King, an autism expert at Seattle Children’s Hospital, the results of recent a Danish study suggests that at least some of the injuries that contribute to autism take place before or shortly after birth. Continue reading »
Apps for life and social skills
The University of Georgia has received $1.2 million in federal funds to develop a mobile application for people with autism and other developmental delays.
The app, to be called i-Skills, will help with daily routines and life tasks — Georgia researcher Kevin Ayres called it “a video cookbook for everyday tasks.” The grant will bring together parents, educators, students, and scientists to collaboratively build a program to help people with autism navigate everyday life.
How cool! The researchers say they will involve people with disabilities in all phases of the project. I’m so curious to see how it works — we have some hints, though. Continue reading »
The latest kids’ flick How to Train Your Dragon, though delightful, is pure sensory overload. Colorful, loud, and 3-D, it caused my own kids to take off their 3-D glasses several times just to get a break from the action.
It’s those bright lights and loud sounds that make a trip to the movies difficult for kids with autism or other sensory issues. But thanks to the Sensory Friendly Films program, a partnership of The Autism Society and AMC Theaters, kids with autism and their families can now enjoy a day out at the movies, too.
Turn on a film dubbed in a language that you’ve never actually learned and watch and listen. Gobbledygook…nonsense…just a blare of unintelligible noise spewing out from the screen, a la Charlie Brown’s teacher. That’s exactly how a kid with autism feels every time their mom coos, “I love you,” or their dad laughs at their sibling’s antics. The autistic child’s lack of understanding of speech, sound and expression ultimately hinders their ability to communicate at all. If you can’t understand Chinese, no way will you be able to speak it.
The Susan Gray School for special needs kids at Vanderbilt University has undertaken a research project using sensory integration therapy that they hope may ultimately help autistic children gain a voice.
Lori Garcia 
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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