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jk1
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07 Jan 2013, 5:00 am

Hello.

I hear that AS is hereditary and I see some posts here on WP about a parent and a child both having AS. So there must certainly be a genetic factor here.

But I'm wondering about my case. Though I'm not formally diagnosed, I have so many traits of AS and have been having a pretty tough life. Both my parents are very comfortable socially and have many friends. Their life is pretty normal. I don't see AS traits in them. However, it seems that my father's brothers and sister have AS traits (eccentric, "selfish", friendless, intelligent etc). My parents must be aware of the resemblance of my personality to theirs (my uncles' and aunt's) and are worried about me.

If, as some say, it's X chromosome-dependent (probably because of the higher prevalence of AS in males), then my case wouldn't fit in that because I got a Y chromosome from my father. Or am I thinking completely wrongly? Does anyone have an opinion on this?



McAnulty
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07 Jan 2013, 6:46 am

The mechanisms are too complex, no one fully understands why it happens to one person and not the other. It is likely that dozens or more genes interact to cause the disorder, so most likely genes from both of your parents played a role. I know that children who have a father with a learning disorder are more likely to have ASD's as well.



izzeme
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07 Jan 2013, 7:10 am

there is definately a heriditary effect in autism/AS, but that is not thw whole story; two people, both coming from several generations of AS can have a perfectly neurotypical child, and vise-versa, autism/AS can occur almost randomly in purely NT families.

noone understands what the actual triggers are, nor do they know how big the heriditary factor is.



Grimdalus
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07 Jan 2013, 7:37 am

No one is exactly sure how it is developed. There are theories arranging from; development issues in the uterus, environmental factors or genetic. It is a major under researched side of science.