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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNew Study-gives clear and direct new evidence that autism begins during pregnancy.
Patches of Cortical Layers Disrupted During Early Brain Development in AutismResearchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Allen Institute for Brain Science have published a study that gives clear and direct new evidence that autism begins during pregnancy.
The study will be published in the March 27 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers Eric Courchesne, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Autism Center of Excellence at UC San Diego, Ed S. Lein, PhD, of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, and first author Rich Stoner, PhD, of the UC San Diego Autism Center of Excellence analyzed 25 genes in post-mortem brain tissue of children with and without autism. These included genes that serve as biomarkers for brain cell types in different layers of the cortex, genes implicated in autism and several control genes.
Building a babys brain during pregnancy involves creating a cortex that contains six layers, Courchesne said. We discovered focal patches of disrupted development of these cortical layers in the majority of children with autism. Stoner created the first three-dimensional model visualizing brain locations where patches of cortex had failed to develop the normal cell-layering pattern.
http://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2014-03-26-cortical-layer-disruption-and-autism.aspx
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)There was one I read through a few months back in which the way in which the nicotinoids (sp?) from herbicides they tested in tiny, tiny amounts were being carried back to the colony by workers and winding up in the food for larvae and causing developmental problems in the midgut of the bees that left them exceptionally vulnerable to winding up with parasites.
Prior to that study, a lot of people had been thinking the chemicals couldn't be linked to CCD, because they weren't directly present in bees tested even down to the limits of testing.
To my mind, this suggests, more and more that autism and other developmental disorders are linked to environmental factors that are affecting the pregnant mother. I wonder what the anti-vaxxer crowd will say to the UCSD study.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)I believe the herbicide ingredient is called neonicitinoid. I wonder if the huge increase in autism tends to occur in clusters around areas where this stuff is used on crops.
GiveMeMorePIE
(54 posts)They are a public health risk and shouldn't be allowed to interact with the rest of the population.
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)I'll just say that I would rather live near them than somebody that would say something as fascist sounding as what you just said.
Vashta Nerada
(3,922 posts)Well, Jenny McCarthy told me otherwise...