This week’s podcast summarizes a new neural stem cell study and a recent review article on IGF-1 treatment in developmental disorders. IGF stands for Insulin Growth Factor and is essential for generation of new neurons, and shaping and health of existing neurons.  Patients with autism spectrum disorder are already starting to be treated with IGF-1, and now there is even more evidence validating it as a target.  If you are interested in participating in a research trial at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine using IGF-1, call the Seaver Center at  212-241-0961.

On Monday the 1st, a consensus statement from over 50 expert scientists was published that collectively emphasized the link between toxic chemicals and neurodevelopment disorders like autism, learning disabilities and ADHD.  In this podcast, we want to help you understand why this is relevant for autism.  If you want to learn more about this statement and read about specific actions that can be taken to minimize exposures to these chemicals, go to www.projecttendr.com.  We will also be having a live chat about it on July 11th at 2PM EST.

This week’s podcast is inspired by a new study in PNAS thatlooked at the role of methylation of the oxytocin receptor in social behavior in people without autism.  Together with studies of the brains of people with autism, it suggests that filling the brains with oxytocin may not be the best approach for treating social impairments.  Instead, compounds that turn on or turn off the genes that control oxytocin may be more appropriate, and it also may help explain variability in why some people respond to oxytocin treatment, and why others do not.   Also, scientific technology has a new way of studying the influence of the environment on brain development.

Studies looking at interventions in autism have been plagued with issues of what treatments will work best in what people, and use of instruments to detect change that were never designed for use in people with autism. Recently, a new instrument was developed to look at improvements in social – communication in autism. This the first of it’s kind and will lead to better interventions to help people with ASD. Also, new research is using biological markers of autism to look at the effectiveness of interventions. The findings are still early, but promising and will help find out what types of treatment are best in which people.

As college and university semesters come to a close, new research is determining the factors that lead to success in college for the individuals with autism but without intellectual disability. They include: help with time management, relationships (both peer and romantic), self-advocacy and organizational skills. Students, parents and educators agree on what is needed, but institutions are struggling to make sure they are available.

Two studies from Sweden came out this week with the same idea: study autism across time, and focus on other things besides just autism. This podcast reviews both. The first examined quality of life in adults over the course of 20 years and the other followed preschoolers into school age. The results are consistent. That is, people with autism have high levels of psychiatric comorbidities which depended on a number of factors. Of particular importance is the role of intellectual functioning on outcome. These recent data are further evidence that while people with autism share struggles, those with ID may need to be considered differently in clinical care, housing, employment, and obviously intervention.

During IMFAR, a study was presented that showed that women with very high levels of folate during pregnancy showed an increased risk of having a child with autism. The media took this to mean that taking too many prenatal vitamins caused autism. ugh. This week, those findings are discussed. Also published this week is a well-designed, long awaited study which examines the theory that too little folate in the central nervous system is the culprit behind autism. Too little folate in the brain is not the culprit, and too much in the blood may be coincidental to something else causing autism. It’s important to have a balance so don’t hesitate to take a prenatal if you are trying to get pregnant.

Also, because you may be IMFAR’d out – we highlight the exciting findings that cognitive behavioral therapy for treating anxiety in people with ASD is not only effective in clinical settings, but in school settings. This has implications people with ASD in special needs classrooms who need treatments for anxiety.

Welcome to a very special podcast – the IMFAR 2016 edition with highlights from this year’s International Meeting for Autism Research in Baltimore, Maryland. As you may notice, my voice is different. I was talking so much that I actually developed laryngitis. I’m not proud of myself for talking so much at a meeting where I should have been listening, but I will make sure the text is somewhere on the web so you can read it.

This year, ASF got a lot of help in reporting the findings back to you from our IMFAR travel grantees. ASF provides scholarships for families, students and people with autism to attend IMFAR. They attended the sessions they were interested in, and were nice enough to report back on what they learned. We will be including their reports here.

The meeting started with an IMFAR preconference organized by Dr. Becky Landa at KKI and hosted by Towson University. Next year when the meeting is in San Francisco, and if you live in the Bay Area you should try to attend. The topics covered included: behavioral interventions, feeding issues, medical comorbidities in people with autism and sensory problems. It included the most recent findings by some of the most respected scientists and highlighted applicable findings for parents and teachers. We heard Dr. Peter Gerhardt talk about how people with autism don’t need a community – they need communities. That can be the communities of the grocery store, the bus route, the library, as well as family and clinical communities. But it isn’t just one.

While just about every topic under the spectrum was covered at IMFAR, I can’t remember a meeting that highlighted gene/environment interactions as much. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an investigator who launched one of the very first studies on the environmental factors in autism for most cases of autism, gave one of the keynotes. She emphasized that the word “causes” in most cases is not scientifically accurate. In fact, the causes are actually a mix of multiple genetic factors and multiple environmental risk factors. And while her examples of environment included toxic chemicals, it’s important to think of environment as the whole of “non-genetic” factors. This can be psychological factors, medical, pharmacological and sociological. There is no single environmental cause, and most cases of autism are not caused by one single genetic cause either (but sometimes they are and I’ll get to that later). People trying to understand the research should know that just because an environmental factor is involved in the causes of autism, that is completely different than the causes of the rises of prevalence. So when you see a graph showing an increase in prevalence on one side and the increase in a risk factor on the other – just ignore it. There are more environmental factors than there are genes and when they are studied individually, just like the effects of individual genes, the effects are small. Looking at the combined effect of multiple genes certainly leads to higher risk factors than individual risk factors. For example, studying the genetic component of autism risk in siblings finds a 20 fold increase but the increased risk because of pesticide exposure is like a 1 ½ fold risk. Over the past 15 years, scientists have been able to narrow down the period of exposure to be during pregnancy, and possibly prior to pregnancy. Everyone thinks about pregnancy but exposures actually affect the sperm and the egg too. It might be hard to realize how much progress has been made in the field, but Dr. Hertz-Picciotto pointed out in her final sentence: “in 2000 scientists knew enough about g x e in autism to put 5 bullet points on one slide. Now it can fill a full hour long talk”.

In addition to Dr. Herz-Picciotto, other environmental health scientists presented in this special panel. Dr. Bruce Lanphear, who is a world respected researcher in lead and IQ in children,

Most people with autism have some sort of sensory issue. This week, researchers at University of Wisconsin and University of North Carolina create new categories of sensory challenges in people with autism to figure out if they can predict functioning. The story is complicated (isn’t it always) but the findings that certain sensory subtypes lead to different adaptive outcomes. This information will help different groups people with autism rather than lumping them together. Also, this podcast discusses new findings on the risk of psychiatric problems in siblings of people with an autism diagnosis. Normally the literature focuses on people with autism, and as it turns out, siblings need extra attention as well.

In the 3rd Environmental Epigenetics Webinar co-organized by Autism Science Foundation, the Escher Fund for Autism and Autism Speaks, Dr. Christopher Gregg from the University of Utah discusses genomic imprinting. In 1 hour he describes what it is, how it affects behavior, and how the environment is relevant to this process. If you are confused about genomic imprinting you are not alone, watch this short video that explains it!

You can also find more information about his research here: http://conflictsinthemind.blogspot.com and http://www.neuro.utah.edu/labs/gregg/Welcome.html.