COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital say they’ve unlocked a clue to the autism puzzle.
A recent study, in collaboration with experts at Rutgers University, found a genetic link between autism and a disorder called “specific language impairment” in children, hospital officials say.
The researchers say finding a cause for autistic children’s communication difficulties might lead to earlier therapeutic intervention.
The findings are published Oct. 30 in the “American Journal of Psychiatry.”
“Language problems and [autism spectrum disorder] are complicated and have numerous genetic factors, but we think that many genetic factors related to communication could be the same for specific language impairment and language-impaired autism,” says Dr. Christopher Bartlett, principal investigator in the Battelle Center for Mathematical Medicine at Nationwide Children’s and the study’s lead author.
Bartlett, who also is an assistant professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University School of Medicine, says the study indicates that one of the most common developmental delays in children may be caused by the same genetic variants that lead to language difficulties in some children with autism.
As many as two-thirds of individuals with an autism spectrum disorder also have language impairments which can range from mild limitations to complete non-verbal behavior, Bartlett said.
Using a genome-wide scan and a series of language tests, the researchers identified two new genetic links for language impairment in families. Each of these new links is jointly related to language-impaired ASD and non-ASD related specific language impairment, suggesting a single cause for both issues, they concluded.