Exploring Social Biomarkers in High-Functioning Adults with Autism and Asperger's Versus Healthy Controls: A Cross-Sectional Analysis.

Exploring Social Biomarkers in High-Functioning Adults with Autism and Asperger's Versus Healthy Controls: A Cross-Sectional Analysis. J Autism Dev Disord. 2020 Apr 11;: Authors: Del Valle Rubido M, Hollander E, McCracken JT, Shic F, Noeldeke J, Boak L, Khwaja O, Sadikhov S, Fontoura P, Umbricht D Abstract Biomarkers for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are lacking but would facilitate drug development for the core deficits of the disorder. We evaluated markers proposed for characterization of differences in social communication and interaction in adults with ASD versus healthy controls (HC) for utility as biomarkers. Data pooled from an observational study and baseline data from a placebo-controlled study were analyzed. Between-group differences were observed in eye-tracking tasks for activity monitoring, biomotion, human activity preference, composite score (p = 0.0001-0.037) and pupillometry (various tasks, p = 0.017-0.05). Impaired olfaction was more common in the ASD sample versus HC (p = 0.018). Our preliminary results suggest the potential use for stratification and response sub-analyses outcome-prediction of specific eye-tracking tasks, pupillometry and olfaction tests in ASD trials. PMID: 32279223 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: J Autism Dev Disord Source Type: research