UCLA-led team uncovers critical new clues about what goes awry in brains of people with autism

This study gives a new critical clue in understanding what has gone awry in the brains of autism patients.”More than 24 million people worldwide are estimated to have autism. In developed countries, about 1.5 percent of children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as of 2017. The disorder affects communication and behavior, and is marked by problems in social communication and social interaction, and repetitive behaviors.“We need to understand how a panoply of genetic and environmental factors converges to cause autism,” Geschwind said. “RNA editing is an important piece of the autism puzzle that has been totally under-appreciated.”The researchers analyzed brain samples from 69 people who died, about half of whom had autism spectrum disorder (which includes autism and related conditions), and about half of whom did not and served as a control group.Xinshu (Grace) Xiao, the senior author of the research and UCLA ’s Maria R. Ross professor of integrative biology and physiology, and her research team analyzed seven billion nucleotides for each brain sample.Reed Hutchinson/UCLAStephen TranXiao ’s team discovered reduced editing in the group members with autism. Specifically, they identified 3,314 editing sites in the brain’s frontal cortex in which the autism patients had different levels of RNA editing from the control group. In 2,308 of those sites, the individuals with autism had r educed RNA editing, said lead author Stephen Tran, a graduate stud...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news