Autism is one of the most heritable complex genetic disorders in psychiatry. Despite this high heritability, autism has a heterogeneous etiology, with multiple genes and chromosomal regions likely to be involved. Scientists are using both indirect and direct approaches to identify autism susceptibility genes. Indirect approaches include the characterization of less complex genetic disorders tha...

Varied presentations of emotion dysregulation in autism complicate diagnostic decision making and may lead to inaccurate psychiatric diagnoses or delayed autism diagnosis for high-functioning children. This pilot study aimed to determine the concordance between prior psychiatric diagnoses and the results of an autism-specific psychiatric interview in adolescents with high-functioning autism. Pa...

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of neuro-developmental conditions characterized by varying degrees of language impairment, including verbal and non-verbal communication, impaired social skill, and repetitive behaviors. In this paper, we review the evidence for an association between autism and thiamine. A relationship between thiamine status and the development of autism has been establis...

BACKGROUND/AIM Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder identified with higher frequency of serotonin abnormalities and gastrointestinal (GI) and sleep problems. This study aimed to evaluate the plasma levels of serotonin, GI symptoms, and sleep problems, and their relationship with autism severity in children with autism. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-five children with autism and 31 healthy s...

Autistic and non-autistic adults' agreement with scientific knowledge about autism, how they define autism, and their endorsement of stigmatizing conceptions of autism has not previously been examined. Using an online survey, we assessed autism knowledge and stigma among 636 adults with varied relationships to autism, including autistic people and nuclear family members. Autistic participants e...

Sensory and self-regulatory symptoms make up most of the comorbid symptoms in autism and are associated with increased autism severity. We validated a parent-caregiver measure of comorbid symptoms in autism, the Sense and Self-Regulation Checklist (SSC), in 265 children <6 yr with typical development (n = 138), autism (n = 99), or other developmental delay (n = 28); Cronbach's α was .87. We rep...

In autism, heterogeneity is the rule rather than the exception. One obvious source of heterogeneity is biological sex. Since autism was first recognized, males with autism have disproportionately skewed research. Females with autism have thus been relatively overlooked, and have generally been assumed to have the same underlying neurobiology as males with autism. Growing evidence, however, sugg...