Overview: Girls require greater genetic changes than boys do to develop the repetitive behaviors associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), report researchers in the January issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics.

Background: Fewer females than males are diagnosed with ASD. Researchers hypothesized that girls require larger genetic variations to develop the disorder.  To test their hypothesis, the researchers examined the severity of ASD symptoms in families with and without girls with ASD.

What's new: The researchers found that boys with ASD had more repetitive behaviors than girls with ASD, in general, and that boys with female siblings with ASD had more repetitive behaviors than boys without a diagnosed sister.

Why it's important: The findings suggest that girls have a higher genetic threshold for developing repetitive behaviors associated with ASD than boys do, and that having a girl with ASD may indicate that the family’s genetic variations are more extensive. The severity of social behaviors was not linked to gender, according to the study.

Genetics

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