age – ASF Weekly Science Podcasts

Everyone knows cognitive ability is critical for understanding autism, however, how does it affect developmental trajectories of autism traits, and can it be accurately measured in those with severe intellectual disabilities? We discuss. Plus, more evidence that tylenol doees not cause autism. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41207796 https://www.aaidd.org/docs/default-source/prepressarticles/which...

This week, Drs. Casey Burrows from @UMN and Shuting Zheng from @UTexas discuss a new paper looking at sex differences in autism features from 20-40 months of age. A new analysis done with data from the Baby Siblings Research Consortium concludes that, early in life, girls with autism show differences in some autism features (like … Continue reading "This one’s for the girls"

Contextual factors, or external factors, are environmental influences and can impact not just a diagnosis but the life course of a person with autism and their families. A recent commentary by autism researchers around the world highlights the importance of these factors and provides resources on how they can be collected in a rigorous, but … Continue reading "Contextual Factors in Autism: W...

This week, special podcast correspondent #MiaKotikovski summarizes new research on the increasing prevalence of autism, with a focus on females. While the number of diagnosed females is increasing faster than the number for males, females assigned at birth still are less likely to receive a diagnosis than males. Additional evidence points to females having more … Continue reading "An update...

This podcast has not covered transition from adolescence to adulthood in the past, probably because there has not been a lot of research in this area. Luckily, recently there has been a surge of investigations and scientifically – supported interventions and recommendations for individuals who are transitioning to adulthood. This podcast reviews the latest in … Continue reading "The Tr...

This week’s podcast re-explores a question about a potential therapy for autism – minocycline. Minocycline is an antibiotic used to treat a number of different infections and some anecdotal reports have linked it to an improvement of autism. This has led to some experimental trials on minocycline, with inconclusive results. This week, a multisite study … Continue reading "What&#8...

Last week a publication (see below) was published as a commentary in the journal Autism Research. It states that researchers, parents, clinicians, educators and the overall community should not be limited in their use of language to describe the broad condition of autism. Some people experience impairments, deficits, and have limitations. Not only is it … Continue reading "The full semantic...

We’ve heard a lot about social robots – do they help? One or two studies are not going to answer this, but a systematic review and meta analysis will! It turns out when you combined all the data, they do help in social abilities, but not other areas. This is how technology can help those … Continue reading "Little things to help the autism community"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34378867/ There have been several small, or small-ish, studies looking at the link between dementia and autism or ID. However, recently, the largest medical record study of 500k people, 12k of which were autistic and 26k were autistic and had ID, examining early onset dementia was published. Those with ASD had a 1.9 increased risk … Continue reading "The risk...