Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Autistic Siblings: Similar or Different?

                Doctors recently learned something very surprising; siblings with autism are more different than they are similar. They do not have the same risk factors for the disease and they are very unique and distinct in their behaviors and personalities, just like any other siblings.  Through whole-genome sequencing, scientists were able to analyze genetic material from 85 families with two autistic children.
            Scientists concluded that there were about 100 mutations that could cause autism and only 30 percent of the 85 siblings tested had the same mutations.  As was expected, the siblings sharing mutations were more similar in their behaviors than those who did not. These findings disqualify the common thought that autism is the same (or close to it) in all of those diagnosed.  Even those that are closely related have a small chance of having the same variation of autism.
            I think that this is a very interesting find.  Not many people know about all of the different kinds of autism affect people in this world.  In my opinion, these scientists are going to have to continue to research families with multiple cases of autism to make sure these findings are legible.  But for right now, this is a good start to give people a better understanding of autism.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting, i would have thought it would have been caused by similar or the same mutations.

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  2. I feel like this makes sense because each birth is another separate joining between a different egg and sperm. It would be interesting if autistic twins did not share the same risk factors.

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