The Haystack not the Needle
Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy at Göteborg University in Sweden have found that, among eight children with four different disorders with autistic features,
all had an extra chromosome, one damaged chromosome or pieces of chromosomes missing in their genes.“I believe it’s a matter of several genes working together, and if one chromosome is damaged, there may be genes in that chromosome that have been damaged or are missing,” accord to reserach Tonnie Johannesson.
It is not entirely clear how many of the children in the study are autistic as reported in the article Autism linked to aberrant chromosomes.
In the study,
- Two boys with Asperger’s syndrome had nearly identical aberrations in a chromosome - a break on chromosome 17 in almost exactly the same place.
- Four unrelated boys who have the disorder [of infantila autism] all had a small extra chromosome, displaying three chromosomes instead of two on the fifteenth pair.
- In a mildly mentally retarded boy diagnosed with ADHD the chromosomes had changed places with each oth
- A girl with a disease resembling Rett’s syndrome proved to be lacking a piece of a chromosome in the third pair.
Johannesson noted that “‘It’s as if we haven’t found the needle in the haystack yet, but now we know which haystack to look into.’”
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POSTED IN: Genetics, Neuroscience, Science
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