Quantitative autistic trait measurements index background genetic risk for ASD in Hispanic families.
Joshua Page, John Nicholas Constantino, Katherine Zambrana and 5 others
PMID 27606047WHAT IT FOUND
In Hispanic families, spouses and relatives had similar autistic-trait scores.
Parents of children with autism were more likely to both score high. These scores may index background inherited risk for autism.
Key findings
01Spouses in both autism and control families had similar autistic-trait scores; the correlation was 0.48 for parents of children with autism and 0.60 for control parents.
02Both parents scored in the upper quartile more often in autism families than control families, at 16.1% versus 3.3%, and this exceeded the 6.25% expected by chance.
03Spanish SRS-2 forms produced higher scores than English forms for children with autism and their parents, but not for siblings or typical families.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 69 children with autism were genotyped, so ancestry associations had limited statistical power. Spanish and English SRS-2 forms were not equivalent, and Spanish forms gave higher scores for children with autism and their parents. The study did not have IQ data, and 41 individuals lacked SRS-2 data; 11 preverbal individuals were excluded from SRS-2 analyses. There were only 5 families with multiple autism cases, so those families could not be analyzed separately. The ancestry and language associations may reflect cultural interpretation, diagnosis severity, or social disparities rather than a direct biological effect.
Declared interests
Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these scores as a diagnosis or as proof that parents caused a child's autism. The study measured family trait associations, and language, culture, and ancestry effects were not separated.