Autism Risk Rates

By
This to be one of the big news items of the day. While it is interesting information to know I'm unclear as to how this is helpful to all of the autistic people we have with us now.

Autism Risk 'High' For Kids With Older Sibling With The Disorder
Autism specialists have long thought the disorder has a strong genetic component -–maybe stronger than any other neurodevelopmental condition.

Now a new study — the largest so far to look at autism in younger brothers and sisters of an affected child — finds their risk of also having autism is higher than previously thought, especially if the younger sibling is a boy.

The overall risk that a younger sibling of an autistic child will have the disorder is 19 percent, the researchers found. Earlier, smaller studies had pegged the risk at 3 to 14 percent.
But if the younger sibling is male, the risk shoots up to more than one in four, according to the study, which appears online in the journal Pediatrics. "That's a really high rate compared to the risk of autism in the general population, which is 1 in 110," saysSally Ozonoff of the University of California, Davis, who led the research.

By contrast, if the younger sibling is a girl, her risk of autism is 9 percent.

And if a family has two or more children with autism, the risk among younger siblings goes up even more — to 1 in 3.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Rise Up In The Darkness

By
Image
The teenager who joked with me over physics and algebra homework tonight was 6 months old the morning of September 11, 2001. He spent that day like many other 6 month olds spend their days, exploring his world and being saved from his own curiosity by mom. That morning after I got tired of hauling him back from the edge of the bed he was intent on crawling over I took him downstairs to safer level terrain. I turned on the television to check the news like I did every morning back then. At first I was horrified by what I saw. One smoldering tower. Not long after, while all the reporters and newscasters were struggling to make sense of what they were seeing, one plane, another tower, and I was pissed. At that point I understood what was happening. Why did people think, and still think, that kind of wretchedness served their cause? I didn't care what the cause was. These were arrogant fools. But the news kept coming about just how wretched humanity had been to itself that day. The
Read more

Treating autism as traumatic brain injury

By
I've been doing research into autism, dyspraxia, how the normal brain works, and how an autistic/dyspraxic brain works (or doesn't work). Traumatic injury to different parts of the brain can cause the same problems suffered by autistic and dyspraxic children. Compare this list of the functions of different parts of the brain and the problems caused by injuries to those areas with these descriptions of dyspraxia and autism. What is Developmental Dyspraxia? Developmental dyspraxia is a disorder characterized by an impairment in the ability to plan and carry out sensory and motor tasks. Generally, individuals with the disorder appear "out of sync" with their environment. Symptoms vary and may include poor balance and coordination, clumsiness, vision problems, perception difficulties, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulty with reading, writing, and speaking, poor social skills, poor posture, and poor short-term memory. Although individuals with the disorder may b
Read more

Battlestar Galactica needs more colour?

By
Here are the letters I mentioned in the previous post. The one that started it (I'm guessing these letters were written after the show's first airing at the end of 2003): Galactica Needs More Diversity The problem I had with Battlestar Galactica was there were no major and very few minor African American characters. There were no Black men in the show at all or if they were, they had virtually no screentime. In the original series, Boomer and Tigh were both played by African American actors. In this rendition of Battlestar, those characters were played by Asian and White actors. In the Caprica city, there no African American extras. On the Galactica's bridge, there was only one African American actress. Another Black actress could be found playing a religious official that swore in the new President of the colonies. This was very troubling to me. Do you not want African Americans to watch your show? Do you want to project the idea that African Americans are not part of the
Read more