The reason for autism is not hidden in the same genetic mutations of brothers and sisters

January 29, 2015  13:37

The same genetic mutations do not cause autism among brothers and sisters and they are not always have inherited from their parents, show the results of the study, carried out in Centre for Applied Genomics.

Scientists of the Centre have studied the genes of parents and children in 85 families where two children had been diagnosed with autism. Specialists found the famous genetic mutations in 36 families. Only 11 sets of siblings shared the same changes, and only 10 sets got those changes from their parents, WebMD reports.

In two-thirds of those families, there's at least one different gene change between siblings, that is, they have their own form of autism

And siblings who didn’t share the same "risk genes" tended to have autism that looked very different, with different problems and challenges. One brother or sister might not be able to speak or communicate, for example, while the other might have close-to-normal language development.

Researchers have concluded that the genetic causes of autism are still poorly studied. It also raises the possibility that the disorder isn’t usually inherited, even when it runs among sisters and brothers. If one of the children suffers autism, there is a 7 times' higher risk that the other child will get the condition, too.

Instead, it could be that some other factor, like a shared environment or common conditions during pregnancy.

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