On the heritability rate of asperger's

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I know this guy who was recently diagnosed with asperger's. He has a newborn daughter.

I heard another guy suggest the heritability rate for asperger's from father to daughter is 40%. Is this correct? Does anyone know what the heritability rate is?

I suspect some of his other male-line relatives are aspie as well.

I (girl) have AS, my dad has some AS traits (not enough to diagnose) and AS is running wild in his family, especially one of his 3 sisters got hit by it badly(others seen fine enough but are not NT either). Out of my grandparents my grandpa probably had the genes since grandma seems pretty NT. But I can't say for sure because I don't really remember him. He rather avoided family gatherings.

My mom is NT and there is no AS signs in her family, although there are signs of Sensory Processing Disorders which I inherited.

So the heritability rate of AS seems to be pretty high, especially in Father-Daughter line.

I have idiopathic ASD (I'm not an idiot hee hee).

None of my family, from at least my grandparents' generation, have any sign of autism. There's quite a bit of conventional "neurosis," though. No psychosis, though.

Twin studies have documented the heritability of autism spectrum disorders. The studies have shown that it is rather frequent that (especially) identical twins both have an ASD--but one just might manifest as "Classic" autism, and the other might manifest as Asperger's.

This is a subject which will be researched quite a bit over the next few years.

I would say, overall, that there is no iron-clad guarantee that a person with an ASD will give birth to someone with an ASD.

I would (rather virulently) disagree with those who want to abort kids based upon the fact that the kid might have an ASD. It's a ridiculous, Nazi-like notion.

The females on my dad's side of the family all have ADD. They're all hoarders and I recently discovered they're all on antidepressants. My aunt ended up getting hooked on meth and had a son who they say has ADHD. I think he may have been autistic and they just didn't tell us. He ended up having a lot of impulse control issues and so now he's locked up somewhere, in some correctional facility. My dad has dyslexia. My grandpa on my mom's side is rather OCD about where things go and his routines. He doesn't like trying new restaurants and he hates onions/peppers. My mother has horrible worrying issues. My entire life she has always reminded me of what the worst is that can happen and my brain kind of put it on repeat. Still.

Do you guys think that due to genetics probably playing a big role in the chances of being born with AS it would be better for AS people to adopt instead of have their own kids?

It seems to me that the heritability rate is rather high. ASDers (undiagnosed) run rampant in my family----from my maternal grandfather, to aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews.....

As to whether people should adopt..... I think it should be left-up to the individual.

It seems so strange to me, that I've known this guy for ten years and just yesterday I find out he's an aspie. There were times when I suspected but only fleetingly. First I thought "just because he's a total nerd, that doesn't mean he's aspie, there are probably NTs who are total nerds". And then a few months ago he starts describing auditory processing problems that sound very similar to my own and I thought "Oh, I didn't know NTs could have problems like those". His obsessive conversations, his obsessive collecting, he owns nearly as much Lego as I do.

But if it seems strange to me, it must be stranger for him. I mean I've just about always known. I was diagnosed at 8. It must be surreal for him to be diagnosed at 40, especially since he already knew what asperger's was long before he was diagnosed (partly through contact with me). It must be so strange for those diagnosed as adults.

I don't think anybody knows exactly what is the heritability rate of ASD. But I do think currently most people feel it's a heritable rate of "autism"-that if you have Asperger's, that still increases your chances of having a profoundly autistic child also, not just Asperger's.

Based on my casual observations, I'd guess the rate is quite high.

As for adopting if autism runs in your family: I also think it depends on the family. In our case, we did not know about autism when we were conceiving, so we didn't have the decision to make, but after we had found out because our child was diagnosed, we agreed that if our second kid was also diagnosed, then we would not have a third kid, despite wanting a third. So we did limit the number of kids we had due to autism, yes. There's probably always going to be a part of me that is a little bit sad about that, but I do think that logically for our family, it was a sound decision. We would not be able to handle a third child (autistic or not) financially, emotionally, even physically just because of how demanding our current children are. That's just the reality for us. But I know that other people might be able to handle more and some less...