Aspies For Freedom

Clues to autism revealed in copied genes
22 March 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.  

Duplications or deletions of portions of the genome may cause many - if not most - cases of autism.

Such errors can alter the number of copies of particular genes in the regions affected. These copy-number variations are 10 times as common in autistic children as in other children.

A team led by Jonathan Sebat of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York, examined 118 families that have one autistic child and 99 families with children who are not autistic. Ten per cent of the autistic children, but only 1 per cent of the other children, had copy-number variants in their genomes that didn't appear in their parents (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1138659).

The copy-number variants tend to affect different genes in each autistic child. This suggests that autism is not caused by a single genetic defect.

From issue 2596 of New Scientist magazine, 22 March 2007, page 20

[source:  http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?i...news_rss20 ]

A 9% margin doesn't exactly represent a major factor for detection/treatment purposes though.

I mean, a study into the benefit of prayers found that people who recieved prayers to get better from a prayer group had a 5% slower recovery rate, if 9% is a valid margin then praying is bad for your health XD (It's not, it's just an error margin)

i just hate it when they say that errors in genes cause autism.  it makes autistics sound like they were born with errors, and that we were defective.  this just provides more steam for the curebie movement that says we are broken and defective, instead of seeing us as human beings, not error fulled monsters.  i prefer varation in genes, like varations cause blue to black eyes.

let me post the statement again with the change.