Autism has gone from a rare disorder to disease dejure, affecting one out 150 children born in the United States, that some parents are calling a silent pandemic.Michael Wigler believes he and his colleagues at Cold Spring Harbor labs are on the cusp of understanding why autism occurs and how some families can be affected more than once. Wigler and his team have discovered how certain spontaneous genetic mutations are relatively common and how they can be passed on by very healthy parents to their offspring. Frequencies of the mutations increase, the team found, as people age. ( News Day)
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Getting A Better Grasp of Autism
Category: Health
Posted on: August 15, 2007 11:18 AM, by EJGili
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Comments
Excuse me for my ignorance about autism...
This seems to imply that autism rates would be correlated with the age of the parents. It seems like that is something that would have been obvious from existing data, but I've never heard that one before. Am I missing something?
-Kevin
Posted by: kevin | August 15, 2007 12:02 PM
Mutliple recent studies (cf. Malaspina et al. 2001; Reichenberg et al. 2006) indicate that greater paternal age is correlated with increased risk for autism and schizophrenia (and perhaps other disorders). It has been suggested that the mechanism is increased rate of de novo mutations (specifically copy number variations) in sperm of older fathers.
Posted by: Neuro-conservative | August 15, 2007 12:29 PM
Where did you get the 1 in 150 ratio? Having looked into the work on autism, I've seen nothing that indicates that this number has any basis in reality, although many anti-vaxxers and mercury militia love to quote that figure.
Posted by: Badger3k | August 15, 2007 08:53 PM
Here are some more studies on advancing paternal age and autism and schizophrenia and sperm mutations: Atladó´´©r, H. O., Parner, E. T., Schendel, D., Dalsgaard, S., Thomsen, P. H., & Thorsen, P. (2007). Time trends in reported diagnoses of childhood neuropsychiatric disorders. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med., 161, 193-198. Link
Brown et al. (2002): Paternal age and risk of schizophrenia in adult offspring. Am J Psychiatry, 159, 1528-1533. Link
Bray, I., Gunnell, D., & Smith, G. D. (2006). Advanced paternal age: How old is too old? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60, 851-853. Link
Burd et al., (1999). Prenatal and perinatal risk factors for autism. J. Perinatal. Med., 27, 441-450. Link
Byrne, M., Agerbo, E., Ewald, H., Easton, W. W., & Mortensen, P. D. (2003). Parental age and risk of schizophrenia, A case control study. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 60, 673-678. Link
Crow, J. F. (1997). The high spontaneous mutation rate: Is it a health risk? Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 94, 8380-8386. Link
Dalman, C., & Allebeck, D. (2002). Paternal age and schizophrenia: Further support for an association. Am J Psychiatry, 159, 1591-1592. Link
Gillberg, C. (1980). Maternal age and infantile autism. J. Autism and Developmental Disorders, 10, 293-297. Link
Lauritsen M. B., Pedersen, C. B., & Mortensen, P. B. (2005) Effect of familial risk factors and place of birth on the risk of autism: a nationwide register-based study. J. Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46, 963-971. Link
Miller, M. C. (2006) A new key to Autism. Aetna IntelliHealth, September 25. Link
Malaspina, D. (2006). In session with Dolores Malaspina, MD, MSPH: Impact of childhood trauma on psychiatric illness (interview by N. Sussman). Primary Psychiatry, 13(7), 33-36. Link
Malaspina, D. (2006). Schizophrenia risk and the paternal germ line. Schizophrenia Research Forum. Link
Rasmussen, F. (2006) Paternal age, size at birth, size in young adulthood&mdashrisk factors for schizophrenia. Eur Journal of Endocrinology, 155 Suppl 1:S65-69. Link
Singh, N. P., Muller, C. H., & Burger, R. E. (2003). Effects of age on DNA double-strand breaks and apoptosis in human sperm. Fertility and Sterility, 80, 1420-1430. Link
Sipos, A., Rasmussen, R., Harrison, G., Tynelius, P., Lews, G., Leon, D. A., et al. (2004). Paternal age and schizophrenia: A population based cohort study. BMJ, 329, 1070. Link
Sullivan, B. J. (2002). Research reveals a cellular basis for a male biological clock. Science Blog, 2002-11-25 22:31. Link
Tarin, J. J., Brines, J., & Cano, A. (1998). Long-term effects of delayed parenthood. Human Reproduction, 13, 2371-2376. Link
Tsuchiya, K. J., Takagai, S., Kawai, M., Matsumoto, H., Nakamura, K., Minabe, Y., et al. (2005). Advanced paternal age associated with an elevated risk for schizophrenia in offspring in a Japanese population. Schizophrenia Research, 76, 337-342. Link
Wohl, M. & Gorwood, P. (2006). Paternal ages below or above 35 are associated with a different risk for schizophrenia in offspring. Eur. Psychiatry, Dec 1 [Epub ahead of print]. Link
Zammit, S., Allebeck, P., Dalman, C., Lundgerg, I., Hemming, T., Owen, M. J., et al. (2003). Paternal age and risk for schizophrenia. Br. J. Psychiatry, 183, 405-408.
There are more in 2007, Croen L., Cantor R, Reichenberg and Gross plus one from Japan all about older paternal age and autism.
Posted by: Helen | August 15, 2007 11:56 PM