Brain Scan Can Detect Autism In Infants

kkleiner writes "A new study shows that brain scans can detect autism in children as young as 6 months old. Researchers at University of North Carolina's Institute for Developmental Disabilities imaged the brains of 92 children who were at high risk for autism. Scans were performed when the children were 6 months, 1-year, and 2-years old. At 2 years, the age when children are typically diagnosed, 30 percent of the children were found to have autism. The researchers then compared the brain images of the autistic children with the others. They saw differences in the brain's white matter, the axon-laden pathways that transmit electrical signals to distant parts of the brain. Of the 15 pathways analyzed, 12 were significantly different between autistic and non-autistic children."

Comments

This is one of those things...

[ackthpt]

It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.

Might be useful in some way for consulting with parents, but a knife-edge decision there, to decide whether to tell people their child might develop Autism, with the possibility you culd be wrong. While it is interesting information the practice side of how to use it raises some questions.

Re:This is one of those things...

[LehiNephi]

There are a couple questions I have about the study:

1) How close was the correlation between the odd brain scans and incidence of autism? what was the error rate?
2) Can the brain scan be used to predict autism, rather than as a 20/20 hindsight study?
3) If the test does reliably predict autism, how practical is it to put it into use? I can't imagine it would make much sense to do it to every 6-month-old--the cost would be prohibitive, particularly since it's a relatively small percentage of the population which are autistic. Would this become something that is only used for children who have a high risk of developing autism?

/parent of an autistic son

Re:This is one of those things...

[MightyYar]

It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.

On the other hand, you can get a 2-year jump-start on locking the kid in the attic.

Re:This is one of those things...

[ianbean]

1) The original research article is open access so you can take a look for yourself. The differences were statistically significant between the two groups (ASD-positive versus -negative) but there isn't enough data to estimate a sensitivity or specificity for using this as a test. 2) It could be a diagnostic test. In theory that would allow potential treatments to begin before the behavioral aspects of ASD manifest (which is around 2yo correct?)

Re:This is one of those things...

[slew]

FWIW, this seems to be just the latest in research that has been coming out in the last few years that seem to add to the evidence that autism onset is really early or preterm.

For instance, that this paper that came out in 2005 attempted to more systematically document the early signs of autism by using a longitudinal study which comparing a set of high risk infants (who had an older sibling diagnosed w/ some ASD), with a control set at 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months.

Of course today, autism is defined in terms of behavior. The key is the origin or eitology of autism. Is this odd brain scan an indicator of the origin, or is it something else and this is merely correlated. Nobody knows.

However, we do seem to have strong indication of certain specific chromosomal problems that can lead to autistic behavior: FragileX, Rett Syndrome, and Tuberous Sclerosis. Fragile X and Rett's are X chromosome related. This is suspiciously related to the observation that incidence of ASD are higher in boys and boys only have 1 "X" chromosome. TS is not X related, but can cause calcium deposits to develop in the brain or in some cases tuber-like growths in the brain (as special case, since tuber-like growths occur all over the body w/ this condition).

Because of the accumulated research, many people speculate that there are actually many pathways to autistic behaviour. You might even think of autism as a symptom of many diseases and conditions (like a cough is a symptom of many diseases), so many experts are not optimistic that will be a "cure" for autism, but perhaps in the future there will be a way in some situations to blunt the symptoms early enough to avoid many of the problems in many of the common cases.

Reality is often much more complicated that the headlines.

Re:This is one of those things...

[tgibbs]

Actually, nobody knows whether there is effective treatment for autism in infants. Until autism can be reliably diagnosed in infants, there is no way to test whether any kind of early intervention will improve outcome.

Differences can be seen at six months looking back

[Martin Blank]

The study results do not detect autism (which most people will read as a diagnosis). When looking back over the scans, differences from normal development could be seen starting as early as six months, but this is retrospective after it was diagnosed at the common ages. This study may at least provide some clues on how autism develops even if it doesn't provide a means of diagnosing it earlier.

Re:Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain

[JoshuaZ]

If I can recall correctly, brain scan does introduces radiation into the brain

Depends on the type. PET scans do have some radiation. The study in question - http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=668180&RelatedWidgetArticles=true used diffusion tensor imaging which is a variant of MRI, which uses strong magnetic fields and does't produce any radiation. The technique is essentially harmless.

Re:Differences can be seen at six months looking b

[Hatta]

Exactly. Next they need to scan another group of babies at 6 months, identify the autistic type scans and see if that predicts autism 2 years out.

Re:It's at least a clue to the cause

[nedlohs]

Not a chance, they aren't being rational to start with so evidence and facts are irrelevant.

Re:Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain

[jamesh]

The technique is essentially harmless.

Except that 30% of those scanned in the study now have autism... coincidence? ;)

Re:Not early enough.

[Ethanol-fueled]

I used to think of eugenics as being cruel, but I've started to sympathize with first poster after having lived next door to a family with an autistic kid. The kid spent the whole day staring silently into a corner and spent all night in very audible screaming fits. Their burden became their unwilling neighbors' burden.

My friend's family was also at the mercy of their extremely well-built and violent retard son. Aside from almost drowning his brother in the backyard pool(a story I mentioned here as AC), he flashed everybody at his brother's birthday party, shot up his whole house with a BB gun, he tried to rape his own mom after getting into the liquor cabinet. They were an otherwise-perfect, well-off family.

Sanctity of life, indeed. "If the fetus is a Downs, grip it out by the crown" is my motto.

Re:Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain

[Tanktalus]

The technique is essentially harmless.

Except that 30% of those scanned in the study now have autism... coincidence? ;)

I bet most of that 30% also were exposed to that super-dangerous Dihydrogen Monoxide, too. That's where I'd put my money. After all, some kids have autism without ever being scanned, and most of them were probably exposed to DHMO. Parents give that stuff to their kids like it was water, without ever realising how dangerous it is!

I'd go on, but I have to go take my kids to their swimming class.

Re:Not early enough.

[budgenator]

Lack of empathy that your displaying is also a frequent symptom of autism.

Re:Not early enough.

[victorhooi]

heya,

You do realise that's the sort of rhetoric that only brainwashed religious nutjobs spout, right?

I'm definitely not 100% comfortable with advocating open season for abortions, and I think it's a tragedy whenever it happen, but to declare moral equivalence between abortions and shooting a child is a logical fallacy that only an idiot or a self-deluded fool could commit.

Look, I don't know if you're ever actually worked with autistic kids. I don't mean movie-style Rain Man style, but an actual real flesh and blood kid, complete with temper tantrums, screaming and violent outbursts. If it was your kid, I'm sure you'd still love them, but I can see why some parents would crack.

I used to help teach special needs kids, and on the bad days, even those couple hours a week could be seriously draining.

And also, many of these have a genetic factor - so it's just like hereditary diabetes - the incident rate today is going up, simply because people with the genes are living longer, and having more kids. Diabetes - sure, you can argue it's not a huge deal if you pass it onto all your kids, but other things, like say Huttingtons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington's_disease), if I knew I was a carrier, I'd think twice before having my own biological children (there are alternatives to abortion, believe it or not).

Cheers,
Victor

Re:Not early enough.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Horseshit detector clicking rapidly. You may gain credibility, however, by describing to us your socioeconomic background and (approximate) age.

We're not talking about Aspergers, the highest-functioning and probably most abused disability diagnosis aside of ADD (shit, I feel ADD right now. Can I get some Adderall and have an extra 4 hours to take that test? It's the new affirmative action! )

We're discussing pure autism, and for somebody who claims to have a remarkably high IQ, you're pretty ignorant and have no personality or style. You reek of a pseudo-intellectual who can use 4-syllable words. But you're not a special snowflake, and your disability and/or parents' money will get you into that school of choice.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:Not early enough.

[dutchwhizzman]

Autism, asperger and high IQ are not known to be related. There are at least as people with IQs just as high that do not show any autistic characteristics as there are with them. At least, there is no scientific study that proves absolute correlation. The only reason people seem to think they are, is because Savants are so fascinating to observe.