For those of you interested in the origin of autism

Post Reply New Topic

The environment actually alters the genes themselves and if that can be considered genetic, then it is genetic.

Yes. I suspect the majority of incidents of autism include genetics as a causal agent/factor; environmental factors have the scope to influence gene expression, so seem to present a not unlikely explanation for the discrepancies consistently found in concordance studies involving identical twins.

The environment does NOT change your genes. It changes which genes are active or inactive. But nothing short of high doses of radiation will actually change your DNA.

Interesting therory in that it seems to explain some of the genetic issues along with the enviroment. Thinking about the enviroment piece maybe the rise has occured as result of all the chemicals and pollution in the world today.

Look at the Amish study were very little to no autism is found among the group of people they studied. Would placing one of these children in our world for x amount of time flip the autism gene in those that posses dormant ill formed genes? Hmmm

It's difficult to arrive at conclusions based on studies of the Armish population because they tend to be genetically isolated. It might just be that any alleles involved in the 'pathway to autism' do not occur or occur only at a very low frequency in their gene pool.

No reason to believe there would be 100% concordance for autism in identical twins when diagnostic replication is far from 100%. The 90% concordance rate is well within the limits of ASD diagnostic errors.

This is just another "just-so-story" from autism research to be able to get more funds. Fact is, there is no evidence whatsoever for epigenetics to be involved in autism. Until the epigenetic-autism link has been proved, it is just a fancy story.

I Have done genealogy myself. I found a twin-pair in my ancestry in the latter part of the 1800s. One of the twins ended up emigrating to the US while the other ended up being admittied into a facility for "death-mute" at age 27. However, she was prpbably not mute, but more likely autistic (LFA). Before this she obviously worked as a maid, first at home and later in several other people's homes. A sibling to her ended up living her whole life unmarried and died at old age without having any children. At other parts of my ancestry I find many other types of autistic traits. On my grandfathers side I have a guy that lived at home helping his old father at 30. He then had a short romance with a (I suspect NT girl) that ended in a pregnancy. They were forced to marry, but before soon they first moved to Denmark, and then the wife emigrated to America alone. At age the of 60, the man moved back to Sweden and settled as a neighbour to his son. I also have examples of epilepsy in my ancestry.

So much for autism not being genetic and not existing before the invention of the label.

Besides, the "ghost" they talk about is our neanderthal ancestry. Couldn't possibly be anything else than introgression in our past. Ghost-genes cannot be kept in our genome if they result in "devastating disorders", but they could if they confer some advantage. The whole reasoning is seriously flawed.

so, rdos. Did you actually watch the videos? Because one of the twins was obviously autistic, while the other wasn't. They weren't both shy, and somewhat reclusive, on the fence of diagnosis. They were entirely different. That is not something you can explain by diagnostic error.

You really need to watch the entire show all the way through and consider the evidence before disagreeing with it.

I don't have time to watch them right now, but I will tonight.



I think you can. Diagnosis is to a high degree dependent on environmental problems, and it is not directly based on autistic traits. Therefore, one person can have good coping skills while the other could have bad. The difference in coping skills could be environmental. Both related to upbringing, pollutants in the environment or genetic vulnerabilities (the latter might very well be related to epigenetics). This doesn't mean that autism in itself (or autistic traits) is epigenetic and not genetic.

Nothing could ever mean that autism is epigenetic and not genetic; by definition, things that are epigenetic are also genetic.

There's no good reason to believe anything the data does not demonstrate.

Taken overall (including consideration to studies showing a much lower identical twin concordance rate), the data demonstrates a strong likelihood that genetics are an important factor, but does not exclude the possibility of influence from environmental factors.

We can infer all kinds of conclusions, in part, because the data is not gathered so as to eliminate errors in either direction. Just as we cannot exclude diagnostic error for causing concordance to appear lower than the actual rate, so too might diagnostic error have resulted in a reported concordance rate higher than the actual rate.

Although we could speculate many interpretations, and indeed must to make any productive use of information from research, it's important to distinguish between what is actually demonstrated by data, and what is speculative interpretation. On the basis of what is actually demonstrated in the concordance studies, genetics are indicated as being an important factor, and environmental influence cannot be excluded.

It makes so much intuitive sense to me that the spectrum involves:

a) a variety of genes acting in combination,
b) some of which may be environmentally triggered

that I am surprised that anyone can be quick to discard scientific research that proves it. Doesn't it seem like the only possible answer for all the various stories we hear? Those that can trace the genetics through their families, and those that cannot with easy clarity?

Of course, it is also possible that come conditions are called autism when they are more acurately mimicing it.

The correct answer, most likely: all of the above.

The world is full of gray. The autistic spectrum and it's origins is not going to be any different.

JMHO.

OK, I've looked at all of it, and my conclusions are the same. Not a shred of evidence was presented about any epigenetic link to autism. There is basically nothing new since I last read on it. Epigenetics effects typical environmental traits like predisposition to diabetes, cancer and early deaf. These have absolutely nothing to do with autism, unless you look at coping ability, which clearly falls into the environmental department.

Also, there are many other propositions how genes are controlled besides epigenetics. These include junk-DNA. I think it is far more likely that the "cause" of autistic behaviors can be found in junk-DNA and CNVs, which could be the operational instructions for social behavior and communication that are at the heart of ASDs. Genes simply could not code for these instructions, and nor could epigenetics.

One should also remember since epigenetics only control if genes are expressed or not, it cannot explain novel behavior like stimming. These differences need genes (or other DNA-instructions) to be able to be passed on from generation to generation, especially when they are similar in people without previous contact.

It was interesting how they used the swedish church-books in a research project like that. These are the same books I've used to trace my ancesters, and their peculiarities.