June 27th, 2008
The latest issue of Nature Genetics opens with an editorial entitled All in the mind about recent discoveries of de novo mutations in some cases of autism and schizophrenia. “Exceptional rigor and caution” are called for in the search for “causative variants”:
If many genes can be perturbed to produce a related set of psychiatric phenotypes, […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 3 comments
June 24th, 2008
Over at Adaptive Complexity is a quite comprehensive post on progress in the hunt for autism genes by Michael White, a biochemist and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences at the Washington University School of Medicine. Starting by noting the too-oft heard link between autism and […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 29 comments
June 23rd, 2008
A letter abstract in the June 22nd Nature Medicine is entitled Reversal of learning deficits in a Tsc2+/- mouse model of tuberous sclerosis. Tuberous sclerosis is a rare genetic disease that affects the central nervous system and causes benign tumors to grow on the brain, kidneys, heart, eyes, lungs, and skin. Those with TSC […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 13 comments
June 22nd, 2008
Charlie and I started the week on the West Coast, visiting my family (and Charlie missing his dad so much he tried to walk back to New Jersey)—came back on a red eye Tuesday morning and he was back in school on Wednesday. Meanwhile:
The Regression Question
Do some children seem to be autistic from the […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 1 comment
June 21st, 2008
After my son was diagnosed with autism in July of 1999 and we had started him in a home ABA program in September of 1999, and as we found ourselves spending more time with families with autistic children, and as we read more and more (in books, on the web) about autism, I started to […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 16 comments
June 15th, 2008
Main event of the week: Charlie’s last day in elementary school.
And, yes, Tuesday.
In the comments, a link to a Press-Enterprise article about an 11-year-old, Nicholas Dooley, who has autism and possibly another psychiatric disorder.
So Goeth the Autism Epidemic
The June 6th Times (UK) has an article on The autism epidemic commeth, which heralds the publication […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 2 comments
June 1st, 2008
Now that it is the first of June, my son is down to his last two weeks of being at the school he’s been at for the past two years. He starts Extended School Year in the middle of June; it’ll be at the middle school and with the teacher who’ll be Charlie’s teacher in […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 0 comments
May 29th, 2008
It was not unpredicted and it has happened again.
David Kirby is again rebranding autism in his latest post about fever, vaccines, and mitochondrial autism. Now it’s “vaccine-induced mitochondrial regression” and even something like “Mute Fever” (a “folksy” name that Kirby comes up with on the side, for reasons noted below). Over a year ago, he […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 14 comments
May 26th, 2008
To read an article about the MMR vaccine and autism in today’s Telegraph, you’d think there was plenty of reason for the “debate” to be “reignited” thanks to Senator John McCain talking about an “autism epidemic”; recent statements about US health officials being too quick to dismiss arguments about vaccine as […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 190 comments
May 24th, 2008
The epic comment thread (as one long-time reader put it) about Adam Race and the parish of St. Joseph’s rages on. Goes without saying that it’ll be of more than a little interest when a hearing is held in June. But back to a legal, autism-related matter of a different kind:
Yes, the proceedings in […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 0 comments
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