Autism Spectrum Disorder

Mothers who took folic acid supplements around the time they became pregnant were less likely to have children with an autism spectrum disorder, a new study has found. Researchers in Norway examined health records of more than 85,000 children born there between 1999 and 2009 to see whether they had some kind of autism diagnosis. They also looked at questionnaires completed by their mothers to see how much folic acid they were consuming in the month before they became pregnant and during the first eight weeks of pregnancy, a critical period of embryonic brain development.

For couples with children, the risk of divorce is highest when kids are young. Taking care of little kids is both stressful and time-consuming, and parents often find they have little time or emotional reserve left over for their spouses. But once children hit their teen years and become more self-sufficient, parents get a break and the risk of divorce eases, studies have found . So what happens to couples who have a child with an autism spectrum disorder ? These kids require lots of attention even as they become teenagers and young adults.

People with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism, dramatically improve their social learning skills and spend more time gazing at pictures of faces after inhaling the social-bonding hormone oxytocin, researchers have found. The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is the first to demonstrate the effects of oxytocin -- a hormone that promotes mother-infant bonding, socialization, trust and cooperation -- in people diagnosed with Asperger's.

The incidence of autism may be much higher than previously thought in the United States and elsewhere in the world, according to a rigorous, comprehensive study of the condition conducted in South Korea, researchers reported Monday. In the first study to take a broad-population look at the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders — types of autism ranging from severe symptoms to the milder Asperger's syndrome — researchers found a rate of 2.64% among South Korean children. That's 1 in 38 children, a rate far higher than the estimate of 1 in 110 children for the U.S. by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Women who reported having had a fever during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to a baby who would later be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a development delay, says a major new study. But the babies of women who treated their fevers with medication fared no worse than babies whose mothers recalled having suffered no fevers at all. The findings, wrote the authors,  "suggest that anti-fever medication used to control fever during pregnancy can reduce or eliminate" the apparent link between maternal fever and autism.

About 1 in 100 of America's 8-year-olds have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers, who will be releasing details of their study later this year. That's a 50% increase from two years ago, when the government estimated the rate at 1 in 150. Dr. Ileana Arias, deputy director of the CDC, said the agency considers the disorder "a significant issue that needs immediate attention." But the higher rate might not mean more kids have autism spectrum disorder, scientists cautioned.

Autism rates may be far higher than previously estimated, researchers reported Monday. But the new study, which found a rate of autism spectrum disorder of one in 38 children in South Korea, included highly functioning children who appear to have a milder disorder usually called Asperger's syndrome. Whether Asperger's syndrome is a distinct disorder or a variation of autism is a question under debate by psychiatrists. The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual -- the text book of mental disorders -- lists Asperger's syndrome as distinct from autism.

Autism symptoms can appear in babies, however some children with the disorder develop normally until about age 2 when they suddenly regress. A new study has linked this second type of autism -- regressive autism -- with larger brain size in boys. Other studies have suggested some association between overgrowth of the brain and autism. The new study, led by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute, demonstrates that there are multiple biological subtypes of autism including likely differences between males and females.

WASHINGTON - Why do kids grow up to cry “Mommy” more often than “Daddy”? The National Institutes of Health has an answer: The wailing of a hungry infant is less likely to bother a man than a woman. In an experiment, 18 men and women were encouraged to let their minds wander while researchers played recordings of white noise mixed with an infant's cries. Those cries abruptly raised attention levels for women, brain scans showed. But men's brains remained in a resting state, according to study results published in the journal Neuroreport.

* Samantha Peralta, an 11-year-old sixth-grader at Blackstock School in Oxnard, won the California Strawberry Festival's Elementary School Youth T-shirt Design Contest. Samantha's design features a California map noting Oxnard as "the strawberry capital of the world!" Her winning design was chosen from 1,072 student entries from three Oxnard school districts. T-shirts featuring her design will be available for purchase at the May 15-16 festival.