Pop News Brief: Between 11 December and 16 December, the Los Angeles Times published a four-part series discussing today’s controversial topics in autism. Alan Zarembo, LA Times staff writer, explores modern issues, such as the increased rate of autism diagnosis, the demographic-based struggles to ensure early intervention and therapy, the benefits and limitations of applied behavioral analysis (ABA), and the realities associated with a diagnosis of autism during adulthood. The articles are paired with a sidebar containing video vignettes of patients and families with autism, an interactive checklist for diagnosis, a map showing autism rates in the Unites States, and a timeline highlighting key historical moments in autism diagnosis and research.

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Autism Profile

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Overview: Two-year-old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have different blinking patterns than typical two-year-olds in response to social stimuli, report researchers in the 12 December online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Background: In the study, 41 children with ASD and 52 typical children were shown a video of a young boy and girl playing. Researchers measured the childrens' rate of blinking during the video.

What's new: Typical children blinked fewer times during the emotional scenes, supposedly to capture more visual information—known as blink inhibition. In contrast, children with ASD had a delayed blink inhibition during the emotional parts of the video. The researchers suggest that the children with ASD lacked the ability to predict an emotional event based on social cues alone and instead used physical cues to interpret the events in the video, leading to a delayed blink inhibition.

Why it's important: According to the researchers, the study’s findings indicate that blink inhibition measurement may serve as a marker for atypical social processing in toddlers.

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Pop News Brief: Time magazine recently reviewed new research that suggests Prozac can significantly decrease repetitive behaviors in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Prozac works by increasing the amount of a neurotransmitter known as serotonin in the brain. Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine administered either Prozac or placebo for 12 weeks to adults with an ASD. About 35% of the participants who took Prozac saw an overall improvement in repetitive and compulsive behaviors, compared to 0% who took placebo. Additionally, 50% of the adults on Prozac saw an improvement specifically in obsessive-compulsive symptoms, while only 8% of the participants on placebo improved.

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Autism Therapy How are Brain Chemicals Affected by ASD?

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Overview: Researchers have identified a set of neuronal defects that may be associated with autism using induced pluripotent stem cells made from the skin of Timothy syndrome patients, as reported in the 27 November online edition of Nature Medicine.

Background: Timothy syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects many parts of the body, including the nervous system, and is commonly associated with characteristics of autism spectrum disorders.

What's new: The researchers found that neurons from Timothy syndrome patients had both structural and chemical changes as compared to control neurons.

Why it's important: While these results still need to be examined in an animal model, the study supports the idea that induced pluripotent stem cell technology can help individualize the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders by categorizing patients according to variations in cellular function at the level of the individual neuron.

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What Is an Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell? What is the Future of Stem Cell Research in ASD?

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Pop News Brief: In May 2011, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed into law the requirement for insurers to cover autistic children in Virginia. The current version of the law was set to begin in January; however, implementation of the law will be delayed until lawmakers can craft legislation that regulates the licensing of professionals who are trained to work with autistic children. How long the new law will be put on hold is unclear.

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Autism Therapy Autism Funding and the Political Process

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Overview: Children with regressive autism have larger brains than children with early-onset autism or non-autistic peers report researchers at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine.

Background: In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on November 28, the researchers examine the association between total brain volume and the age of symptom onset in a large group of 2- to 4-year-old boys and girls with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

What’s new: According to the study, the boys with regressive autism have abnormal brain enlargement, while brain measurements in boys with early-onset autism are similar to those of controls. The head circumferences of boys with regressive autism are normal at birth but begin to differ from the other groups at approximately 4 to 6 months of age.

Why it’s important: These findings support the growing consensus that varying conditions within the autism spectrum have different underlying pathologies. However, the brain size disparity appears to be gender specific; no differences were reported in brain size of female patients, no matter their diagnosis.

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