Autism

One out of four toddlers born prematurely showed early signs of autism, and the risk was greatest among those children who were the smallest at birth, researchers reported. Premature birth and low birth weight have been recognized in earlier studies as risk factors for a number of developmental problems, including autism and other illnesses. But the study of 91 children, who were born seven to 14 weeks prematurely and weighed 3.3 pounds or less at birth, was the first to directly assess the risk of autism in this population.

Since 2008, when a group of physicians drew a hypothetical link between Lyme disease and autism, a growing number of patient activists have embraced the belief that the hallmark neuropsychiatric symptoms of autism may spring from the body's immune response to the bite of a deer tick carrying the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi . But a research letter published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. casts doubt on the link. A group of researchers and clinicians from Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University Medical Center acquired blood samples and medical records of 120 children -- 70 of them diagnosed with autism and the rest unaffected siblings or healthy controls -- recruited primarily from the northeastern and western United States, where Lyme disease infection is relatively high.

By the time Andrew Arce was 15 months old, his parents suspected he was autistic. He refused to cuddle, flapped his arms and stared into space a lot. On occasion, he picked at his nose until it drew blood and, with it, smeared the walls of the family's Pasadena town house. It was nearly a year, Guillermo Arce said, before Kaiser Permanente, the family's healthcare provider, confirmed their fears. The diagnosis wasn't much help, though.

At times, Andy Shih still finds himself overwhelmed by the groundswell of interest in autism apps he's seen in the three years since Apple Inc. released the first iPad. In his role as senior vice president for scientific affairs at Autism Speaks, a national advocacy organization based in New York, Shih helped organize a "hacking autism" event in San Francisco with cosponsor AT&T Inc. that drew 135 developers. It was the group's third event, following previous hackathons co-sponsored with Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp.

Insurers have been skirting their obligation under recently enacted state law to provide costly behavioral therapies for autism, according to the Department of Insurance, which is proposing emergency regulations aimed at enforcing the law. In July, California joined more than two dozen other states in requiring private insurers to cover such treatments when medically necessary. But state officials said they have received dozens of formal complaints that insurers have been delaying and denying coverage by imposing limits on how much therapy a child can receive and who can provide it, and in some cases by requiring extensive cognitive testing before treatment can begin.

It's not unusual for a parent of a child newly diagnosed with autism to recall a strange uncle who always lived alone, was painfully awkward with people and had an obsessive interest in bicycles. Or, for that matter, for that parent to look sideways at his or her spouse with sudden recognition. The lack of eye contact. The rigid need for routine. An all-consuming hobby. That hatred of social gatherings. They are all traits of autism and Asperger's, a milder form of the condition.

As the father of a 14-year-old autistic son, I must take issue with the erroneous statements made in Frank del Olmo's Dec. 27 Perspective on Autism. While the description of the dramatic progress Del Olmo's son is making no doubt gives much-needed hope to parents struggling with their child's autism, many of his assertions imply that if an autistic child is simply given enough therapy and education early enough, he (or she) can "recover." While a very few autistic people have likely "recovered," their number is undoubtedly quite small.

Re "Setbacks seen for autistic young adults," May 14 As the parent of a young man withAsperger's syndrome, the statistics on post-secondary employment for autistic students are not surprising. My son has a genius IQ and recently earned his bachelor's degree. He has submitted hundreds of resumes but can't land a menial job. Perhaps he is not assertive enough in an interview or has difficulty with eye contact, but this doesn't reflect his ability to troubleshoot a computer or his social networking skills.

Imagine navigating a world of social situations in which you are a very poor judge of other people's motivations and state of mind. It could seem like a very random world indeed. That is the world as seen through the eyes of someone with profound autism . Without the capacity to infer or deduce correctly what other people know, and why other people act as they do, one's sense of cause and effect is severely impaired. When bad things happen, you can only assume it was the work of bad people acting badly.

Autism seems to have a powerful genetic component, but a family history of the disorder isn't the whole story. The circumstances of a baby's birth may also predispose a child to developing autism, says a new study. Babies who come into the world after a difficult delivery, who have to be coaxed or sometimes pulled out of the birth canal, who have gotten tangled in the umbilical cord or whose first days are characterized by feeding problems, anemia or jaundice, these children face higher odds of developing autism than those whose births were more uneventful, says the study , published Monday in Pediatrics.

Pregnant women who took the anti-seizure drug valproate during pregnancy increased the odds that their baby would have autism, and were roughly twice as likely to give birth to a child who would go on to be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, according to a large study that captured 10 years of births in Denmark. Valproate, often known by its commercial name Depakote, is widely prescribed in the treatment of epilepsy and a wide range of psychiatric conditions. It is one of a class of drugs that has been linked to a child's delayed cognitive development and to some congenital malformations.

Scientists have created a way to make a human brain transparent, enabling them to take deep three-dimensional tours through the mysterious organ and trace its circuitry down to the molecular level. The recipe for transforming cadaver brains into see-through research tools stands to accelerate investigations of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and a host of other brain maladies, and already has led to a significant insight into the peculiar characteristics of neurons associated with Down syndrome and autism.

On his own and as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young), two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stephen Stills has taken part in many a benefit concert over the last four decades, but usually his role has been that of rock singer and guitarist. That changes with the Light Up the Blues benefit concert on Saturday for Autism Speaks, which CSN is headlining and also features Lucinda Williams, Rickie Lee Jones, Don Felder, Ryan Adams and several others at Club Nokia.

The debut feature from writer-director Alonso Mayo, "The Story of Luke" is about a young man who is grappling with autism and the first steps toward independent living. Having long lived with his grandparents, Luke (Lou Taylor Pucci) is abruptly placed with other relatives (Cary Elwes, Kristin Bauer) who don't exactly know what to do with him. Luke is set on a course of self-discovery that he has always been made to feel was beyond him. In the lead role, Pucci, always a thoughtful, compelling actor (he can also be seen in a very different role in the new "Evil Dead")

Crosby, Stills & Nash, Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, Rickie Lee Jones and former Eagles guitarist Don Felder top the list of musicians taking part in a benefit for Autism Speaks on April 13 at Club Nokia in Los Angeles. Actor-comedian Jack Black will emcee. The Light Up the Blues concert is being spearheaded by Stills and his wife, Kristen, who have an autistic son. Stills previously has enlisted longtime cohorts David Crosby and Graham Nash for other Autism Speaks events. Tickets are $38.50 to $125, with proceeds benefiting Autism Speaks, the 8-year-old advocacy organization with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Princeton, N.J. The event aims to highlight Autism Speaks' Light It Up Blue annual global awareness and fundraising campaign going on throughout April.

U.S. schoolchildren are being diagnosed with some form of autism at a record rate of 1 in 50, according to a new government study. That rate of 2% is based on a survey involving tens of thousands of children between the ages of 6 and 17. A similar survey in 2007 found a rate of 1.2%. Though the increase is likely to fuel speculation that an expanding environmental threat is behind the rise in autism cases, the authors said their report did not support that view. Rather, better detection appears to be driving the surge, according to the researchers, from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Four that worry physicians The Chicago Tribune examined four treatments in depth. Medical experts said that the therapies have not been proved to help children with autism and that each also carries risks. IVIG treatment What it is: Antibodies culled from donors are infused into the patient intravenously over many hours. FDA-approved for: Pediatric HIV, some bone marrow transplants. Risks: Headaches, anaphylactic shock, meningitis, tiny risk of contracting infectious disease.

Cormac is a law-school-bound young man living in a cramped apartment in New York's West Village with his financially strapped mother. Iris is a blogger, working from home in Queens, who hires "Mac" to spiff up her website. The love story that develops between them in Ken LaZebnik's drama "On the Spectrum," now at the Fountain Theatre, would be traditional to a fault were it not for a salient difference: Mac and Iris are characters with autism. Mac has Asperger's syndrome and lives a fairly mainstream life with help from his mother, who is there to nudge him when he gets stuck in one of his obsessive loops.

Insurers have been skirting their obligation under recently enacted state law to provide costly behavioral therapies for autism, according to the Department of Insurance, which is proposing emergency regulations aimed at enforcing the law. In July, California joined more than two dozen other states in requiring private insurers to cover such treatments when medically necessary. But state officials said they have received dozens of formal complaints that insurers have been delaying and denying coverage by imposing limits on how much therapy a child can receive and who can provide it, and in some cases by requiring extensive cognitive testing before treatment can begin.