国际英语资讯:With MRI, researchers find autism biomarkers in infancy_时事

国际英语资讯:With MRI, researchers find autism biomarkers in infancy

The researchers obtained MRI scans of children while they were sleeping at 6, 12 and 24 months of age, and assessed the babies' behavior and intellectual ability at each visit. They found that the babies who developed autism experienced a hyper-expansion of brain surface area from 6 to 12 months, as compared to babies who had an older sibling with autism but did not themselves show evidence of autism at 24 months of age. Increased surface area growth rate in the first year of life was linked to increased growth rate of brain volume in the second year of life. Brain overgrowth was tied to the emergence of autistic social deficits in the second year.

By inputting these data, including MRI calculations of brain volume, surface area, and cortical thickness at 6 and 12 months of age, into a computer program, the researchers sought to classify babies most likely to meet ASD criteria at 24 months of age. They found that, among infants with an older ASD sibling, the brain differences at 6 and 12 months of age successfully identified 80 percent of those infants who would be clinically diagnosed with autism at 24 months of age.

The predictive power of the findings may lead to a diagnostic tool for ASD that could be used in the first year of life, before behavioral symptoms have emerged.

"We don't have such a tool yet," Estes was quoted as saying in a news release from UW. "But if we did, parents of high-risk infants wouldn't need to wait for a diagnosis of ASD at 2, 3 or even 4 years and researchers could start developing interventions to prevent these children from falling behind in social and communication skills ... By the time ASD is diagnosed at 2 to 4 years, often children have already fallen behind their peers in terms of social skills, communication and language."