The Infant Behavioral Summarized Evaluation (IBSE) is a rating scale adapted from the Behavioral Summarized Evaluation (BSE) and specifically related to the assessment of behaviors of young children having autistic disorders. Content validity and reliability studies described in the paper were made from behavior ratings of videotapes for 89 children aged from 6 to 48 months. Results show a sign...

Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are common neurobehavioral syndromes characterized by deficits in social interactions, impaired communication skills and repetitive stereotypic behaviours expressed by 3 years of age (1). Recent studies of these disorders indicate a strong genetic component but specific aetiologies and pathogeneses are usually unknown (1–3). Concordance for ASD is 90% in identi...

OBJECTIVE Disorders on the autism spectrum, as well as autistic traits in the general population, have been found to be both highly stable across age and highly heritable at individual ages. However, little is known about the overlap in genetic and environmental influences on autistic traits across age and the contribution of such influences to trait stability itself. The present study investig...

Male preponderance in autistic behavioral impairment has been explained in terms of a hypothetical protective effect of female sex, yet little research has tested this hypothesis empirically. If females are protected, they should require greater etiologic load to manifest the same degree of impairment as males. The objective of this analysis was to examine whether greater familial etiologic loa...

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often suffer gastrointestinal problems consistent with imbalances in the gut microbial population. Treatment with antibiotics or pro/prebiotics has been postulated to regulate microbiota and improve gut symptoms, but there is a lack of evidence for such approaches, especially for prebiotics. This study assessed the influence of a prebiotic galactool...

AIM To assess serum myeloperoxidase (MPO) levels in autistic children with severe gastrointestinal (GI) disease and to test the hypothesis that there is an association between serum MPO concentration and inflammatory GI disease, including antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA), previously seen in a subgroup of autistic children. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Serum from 40 autistic children with ...

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and restricted behavior and interests. A disruption in the balance of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission has been hypothesized to underlie these disorders. Here we demonstrate that genes of both pathways are affected by ASD, and that gene expression of inhib...

AIM As relationships between autistic traits, epilepsy, and cognitive functioning remain poorly understood, these associations were explored in the biologically related disorders tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), and epilepsy. METHOD The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), a quantitative measure of autistic traits, was distributed to caregivers or companions of ...

In no area of developmental pediatric practice is there more controversy regarding the choice of treatment than related to children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Complementary and alternative medical therapies (CAM) are often elected because they are perceived as treating the cause of symptoms rather than the symptoms themselves. CAM used for autism can be divided by proposed mechanis...

In their landmark papers, both Kanner and Asperger employed a series of case histories to shape clinical insight into autistic disorders. This way of introducing, assessing and representing disorders has disappeared from today's psychiatric practice, yet it offers a convincing model of the way stereotypes may build up as a result of representations of autism. Considering that much of what socie...