By Joe Harris | Courthouse News Service

ST. LOUIS (CN) – The lieutenant governor has joined officials from other states in suing the federal government to try to stave off health-care reform – though most of Missouri’s top political players aren’t on board. Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, sued Uncle Sam after Attorney General Chris Koster and Gov. Jeremiah Nixon, both Democrats, refused to do it.

Kinder wanted to join a lawsuit in Florida involving 20 state attorneys generals, but couldn’t because he does not have the attorney general’s power to file a complaint on behalf of the state and use state money for it.

Kinder and three Missourians sued the Secretaries of Treasury, Labor, Health and Human Services, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in Federal Court.

“Many Missourians will lose the options for health insurance they currently enjoy,” Kinder said in a statement. “Missourians have less health care coverage after the federal law was passed than they did before it was passed.”

Kinder’s move was met with skepticism by state Democrats, who want him to release the names of donors to his private legal fund.

“For months he has refused to disclose his donors,” Missouri Democratic Party spokesman Ryan Hobart told The Associated Press. “Missourians deserve to know if Peter Kinder is allowing his office to be subsidized by the insurance industry and its lobbyists or candidates who want this law repealed. Instead, up to this point, all of that information has been hidden from the public, even though Lt. Gov. Kinder is using state resources to publicize his actions.”

Kinder, who has said he is considering running against Nixon for governor in 2012, told the AP through a spokesman that the list of donors will be released, except for  those who have requested anonymity.

Kinder has set up a nonprofit corporation called Health Care in Action to raise money for the lawsuit. He said he filed the complaint as the state’s senior citizen advocate and as a private citizen.

Kinder claims that Obama administration’s historic reform, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), is unconstitutional because it exceeds the powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause, by requiring individuals to carry a certain amount of health care coverage.

“Long before PPACA’s passage, Congress knew the individual mandate to buy certain federally sanctioned health insurance was constitutionally repugnant,” the complaint states. “A Congressional Research Service report to Congress noted the lack of constitutional authority for the mandate requirement, finding that ‘[d]espite the breadth of powers that have been exercised under the Commerce Clause, it is unclear whether the clause would provide a solid constitutional foundation for legislation containing a requirement to have health insurance. Whether such a requirement would be constitutional under the Commerce Clause is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service.’”

Kinder also claims that the bill forces state employees to enforce a federal health care scheme, in violation of Missouri’s sovereignty; that it mandates the compensation Missouri must provide to its constitutional officers; that it imposes a direct tax penalty upon Missouri because the state requires insurance companies to cover autism treatments; and that it forces the state to violate its own constitution and implement an unconstitutional state tax increase.

He wants PPACA enjoined. He is represented by Mark “Thor” Hearne II, with Arent Fox of Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/08/28664.htm

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By Martine Ward | FIGO

Mothers-to-be who smoke put their child at greater risk of developing mental health problems, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK wrote in their study, called Maternal Smoking and Child Psychological Problems: Disentangling Causal and Noncausal Effects, that children with mothers who smoked during pregnancy were more likely to experience hyperactivity, conduct/externalising problems and peer problems.

“The results of these studies support the need for action to promote tobacco-control activities that would mitigate tobacco exposure throughout child development, starting in the pre-natal period,” the study authors wrote.

A recent study carried out on 400,000 British schoolchildren found that babies born just one week early are more likely to develop learning disabilities and more serious conditions, such as autism or deafness.

Some 8.4 per cent of pre-term children – those born at less than 40 weeks – suffered from a learning disability compared with just 4.7 per cent of those born at full-term, the study revealed.

Source: http://www.figo.org/news/maternal-smoking-may-affect-childs-mental-health-002582

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By Charlene Muhammad | The Final Call

LOS ANGELES – Parents who have lost their jobs, are struggling to find work, or planning for new mouths to feed are also fighting to get health insurance for their children.

Advocates in California say help is there, but too few people know about it.

Part of the help they are referring to is Healthy Families, California’s State Health Insurance Program, which provides low cost medical, dental, and vision health coverage to children whose families earn too much money to qualify for free health insurance.

According to Kidsdata.org, which promotes the health and well being of children in California by tracking different health indicators, Black children are about 13,000 of the 900,000 enrollees in the Healthy Families program, compared to Latinos at 51 percent with Whites and Asians at just under 10 percent.

“Once you face barriers dealing with low income and already marginalized populations who are taking care of families and dealing with the hurdles of trying to put food on the table, health care just gets pushed aside,” said Annie Park, a policy director at Community Health Councils, Inc., a non-profit health advocacy group.

The biggest hurdle for the program was to avoid cuts and denying health insurance access due to California’s $19 billion budget deficit, but with President Barack Obama’s extension of the State Health Insurance Program, Healthy Families will run through 2013 and beyond, according to advocates.

The hurdles to health insurance for many families include long waiting lists and complex application requirements, which vary from county to county. “Imagine somebody that has to take off of work to fill out an application, they only have a limited amount of time.They may have to be on the bus system, and in Los Angeles and many major cities, the bus system is horrible, so it’s not a simple process to get through,” said Sonia Vasquez, a policy director for the Community Health Councils.

Although Healthy Families and Medi-Cal, the state’s free insurance program, have tried to provide applications in different languages, potential enrollees are dealing with workers who do not speak their language creating anxiety that prolongs the process.

“But that should not be a barrier to getting children insured,” said Kelly Hardy, health policy director for Children Now, a national child advocacy organization.“Health insurance is important because uninsured children admitted to the emergency room are 60 percent more likely to die than insured children … insured children are more attentive in school and preventive care is cost effective.”

To overcome the language barrier and bridge the divide between needy families and public health insurance, Healthy Families utilizes Certified Applicant Assistants to help enroll families in the program.

In part, to qualify, children must be 18 and under; without employer-sponsored health insurance in the last three months of their application; and cannot be eligible for or enrolled in Medi-Cal.

Applications are available at www.healthyfamilies.ca.gov and families can find out in 10 days or less whether their children are eligible.

The program’s Health-e-App Public Access allows families to enroll online (www.healthyfamilies.ca.gov). For information on public health insurance across the U.S., families can visit https://www.cms.gov/home/chip.asp.

Once enrolled in the Healthy Families programs, a monthly premium between $4 and $24 for each child is paid, but no more than $72 for each family. The co-payment is $5 to $15 for visits and some services.

To qualify, a family’s income can be up to 250 percent of federal poverty guidelines. The guideline for a family of four is $22,050 and for a family of six, $29,530, according to the Department of Health and Human Services 2009 Poverty Guidelines.

Nearly one million children in California are uninsured, but 600,000 are eligible for Healthy Families or Medi-Cal, according to the California Endowment, a private health foundation. It works to get children insured by connecting families and health insurance programs through day care centers.

Fabiola Magdaleno doesn’t mind speaking out to help raise awareness about help that exists.She and her children were covered through a health plan at her husband’s job, but her daughter contracted a disease and had a seizure two months before he was laid off from work and lost his insurance.

Insurers called the child’s disease a pre-existing condition.The family could not afford extended coverage offered by their former plan and MediCal denied their request for emergency coverage, she said. Advocates helped enroll her children in Healthy Families.

“At the end of the day, when you can’t provide your kids with health care and their other needs, you feel you’ve failed as a parent,” Ms. Magdaleno said.“We are your regular American family who worked hard, paid our bills, and tried to provide for our family, but when you run into trouble and don’t qualify for anything, what do you do?I feel that we’ve done everything right … We’re not insured right now, but at least our kids are.”

The program also helped Marie Antoinette, a Black, married mother of three. Mrs. Antoinette’s children were covered through her husband’s job plan, until the job was lost. “Without Healthy Families insurance, none of my three children would have been able to see a doctor on a regular basis nor have vision coverage. We were told in order to keep insurance on just my husband and myself, the monthly premium would have been $800 with minimal coverage,” Mrs. Antoinette said.

Source: http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Health_amp_Fitness_11/article_7086.shtml

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By Madeleine Brindley | WalesOnline

CHILDREN with autism are facing a future of mental health problems because NHS services do not know how to care for them, a charity has claimed.

The National Autistic Society Cymru claims children are developing mental health problems because they have fallen victim to a “broken” service.

Parents of autistic children today said the lack of support from NHS services was typical of the health service’s overall approach to autism.

This is the latest damning criticism to be levelled at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Wales.

It is estimated that up to 70% of children with autism also have a mental health problem, such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder or other anxiety disorders.

But NAS Cymru said many of these are preventable.

Because autism is a complex disability, when mental health problems do develop in children they can be much harder to recognise, diagnose and treat.

The charity said such problems are often dismissed as an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of having autism.

Shirley Parsley, NAS Cymru’s national co-ordinator, said: “With the right support at the right time, children with autism can have good mental health.

“However, too many are developing preventable mental health problems and find themselves up against a broken system that doesn’t understand them or their needs.

“All too often they receive inappropriate, ineffectual and sometimes harmful treatments.

“Families need to know that they are not alone. We have resources for children, parents and professionals to help children with autism get the mental health services they need.”

Jill Grange’s son Matthew, now 12, was diagnosed with autism when he was four and a half years old by a child psychiatrist – part of the local CAMHS team – who said she had a special interest in autism.

“She told me he was autistic and that he’d probably been that way since birth. She gave me a leaflet. I asked about things that could help and she said there’s nothing you can do for autism.

“I was given a medical diag-nosis and then told there was nothing I could do about it – I was left to find out about support and therapies on my own.

“If you have the wherewithal and the money to find the therapies that suit, your child will benefit but if you haven’t that child is stuck.”

Ms Grange, 55, a former health visitor who lives in Bridgend, used her savings to pay for Matthew to receive a range of therapies, which she believes have benefited him.

“When we would go back to see the psychiatrist, I’d tell her what I was doing with Matthew and she would just write it down. Then, after 18 months, she said I was coping well with his autism and she discharged us,” she said.

“One of the problems is that CAMHS doesn’t deal with children with learning disabilities and autism doesn’t fit into learning disabilities or mental health.

“I’m sure the Assembly Government is aware of this and it will respond, but it all takes time and we still do not have any experts who know what families are going through.

“It is frightening because services are so slow to respond and in the meantime the burden is on the family.”

NAS Cymru has launched a campaign – You Need to Know – to help improve parents’ understanding of mental health services in Wales and help key professionals improve their awareness of autism.

A Welsh Assembly Government spokeswoman said: “The Assembly Government is committed to developing specialist child and adolescent mental health learning disability services and are working to introduce a specialist learning disability service for children and young people to work alongside child and adolescent mental health services.

“In 2008 we launched an autistic spectrum disorder action plan for Wales – the first of its kind in the world.

“This plan takes into account the issues raised here and health boards are developing new services to meet the needs of children and young people with autism and mental health issues.

“Also, an evaluation of assessment and diagnostic services for children with autistic spectrum disorders in Wales is currently under way and we expect the findings to be made available later this year.

“In addition, in response to the joint report by the Wales Audit Office and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales into services for children and young people with emotional and mental health needs, we have developed an action plan, which will be published shortly.”

Source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/06/21/autistic-children-falling-through-gaps-in-mental-health-services-91466-26689671

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By Leslie Toldo | ABC 12

A five-minute test may tell you if your child is autistic. There may actually be a magic wand of sorts that can turn back the hands of time and wipe away some skin damage.

HealthFirst reporter Leslie Toldo explains how this new screening works for kids as young as 15 months.

Typical screenings take two-four hours, but this simple screening can help doctors decided if a toddler is at risk.

Even before Ben’s first birthday, his mom started worrying about autism.

“He wasn’t imitating us. He wasn’t pointing or clapping or playing any of those sort of interactive games,” said his mother, Katy Crowther.

Though her pediatrician told her it was too early, Crowther pushed for autism testing at just 14 months. Early intervention has made all the difference.  “There’s still a gap between Ben and his typical peers that you can see, but he has caught up tremendously,” she said.

This is the rapid abc, a new screening that uses simple activities to test for autism. Experts check to see how toddlers respond to activities like having their name called, looking at a book, being tickled and playing ball.

The five-minute screening targets attention, reciprocity and communication in children ages 15-17 months. Once it’s complete, a software program computes a score. If autism is suspected, the child will undergo further testing.

“There really isn’t something quick and rapid like the abc out there where pediatricians can interact for just three-five minutes,” said Jenny Mathys from the Emory Autism Center in Atlanta.

“It’ll help parents and myself to feel comfortable that I’m doing everything I can to identify if there was an issue,” said Jessica Sales, referring to her son Cooper.

Five minutes that could make a world of difference for a toddler’s future.

The rapid abc test was developed by Emory University and Georgia Tech.  Studies show it’s accurate in identifying toddlers at risk for autism spectrum disorders who need further testing and intervention.

Researchers say the goal now is to make the test part of regular pediatric checkups at 18 months and 24 months.

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/health&id=7306754

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By Jeff Witzeman | Huffington Post

It seemed like an innocent enough request: “Dad can you take my friends and I to Chinatown this Friday when we have the day off?” “Sure,” I said. After all it would be good to get out and do something. As I thought about things more and more though, something didn’t add up. Why Chinatown? My 14-year-old Asperger’s son and his friends clearly didn’t have an interest in Chinese culture. I heard the word “knuckles” in one of their phone conversations and deduced brass knuckles as being on of the things they wanted to buy. “Fine,” I thought. The boys weren’t the fighting kind and though brass knuckles are illegal, what’s the harm?

In the car on the way, one of my son’s friends who I’ll call Drew said, “Are you just going to drop us off and we’ll meet you in a couple hours?” “No, I’ll be with you the entire time,” to which Drew tried a few other tactics to try and keep me away.

At this point I’ve got to interrupt the story to express what every Asperger’s parent I know feels, which is gratitude that my son actually has friends he can be with, that like him. Because of some of their awkwardness around social situations it makes it hard for a lot of kids with this form of autism to have friendships. Would my sentimentality become a liability? That remained to be seen.

So we get to Chinatown and I stay about 20 feet from the guys just to know what they’re doing. They go into a back room that says, “Employees Only” at one point. I’m guessing they’re buying fireworks and brass knuckles … and I was right. They get some Airsoft BB guns and we all go home happy. I’m a little uncomfortable with the illegal items on the ride home, but I think, “What’s the big deal, they’re just boys being boys.”

We get home, they go to the park, I make sure they all have safety glasses and I retire to catch up on some business at home. I get a call an hour later, and they want to come back to our house. Again, I’m just happy to provide a place for my son to learn social interaction. Within a half hour of being at home, I hear some loud noises in the back yard, and when I go outside I start feeling really crazy. All the boys except my son are shooting Airsoft guns with no safety glasses and firing off bottlerockets. My son’s off to the side watching the chaos. “That’s it! Everybody in the car, I’m taking you home,” followed by some terse phone calls to the parents about the boys breaking the clearly stated house rules.

At the time I was really upset and feeling nuts. Was this all my fault? Did I do something to create this mess? Did I just get “played?”

The part that was particularly vexing to me was the ringleader, Drew, who I affectionately call “an addict in training.” He had all the behaviors without the actual substance to be an addict. The manipulation, lies, covering his tracks, all were things I had been uncomfortable with, but now I could see where they lead.

“Do you see how Drew continually puts other people’s lives at risk, with the things he does?” I asked my son. It actually turned into what I thought was a valuable learning experience. Not being able to recognize social cues, it’s very hard to understand when people are lying or taking advantage of the Asperger’s kid. Our son began putting two and two together. “It may not be a huge problem now, but two years from now when Drew gets behind the wheel of a car, it could mean your life. He’ll say, ‘I’m fine, I’ve only had a couple drinks,’ and the next thing you know he’s driving you into an accident.” My son had some sober looks as he contemplated the possibilities.

It’s been a month since the crazy day. My son still plays with the same group of guys at times, but he expanded his friends at our behest to include other boys. Though I’m not comfortable with him being with the Drew’s of the world, for now I’m limiting my influence to what goes on at home and being in communication with our son about what goes on outside. I try to exert as little direct control on him as possible so as to let him learn things for himself.

The lesson from all this was where the weaknesses in our Asperger’s son lie and what we can do to shore it up. Recognizing people that are harmful to him requires help and discussion. Some of the mildly troubled kids seem to be attracted to him because he’s so level … he balances out their wild side. He’s going to form relationships with these folks. How to defend himself and stay away from their wake is going to have to be learned behavior.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised so far as to how much can actually be learned by Asperger’s kids and how willing they are to learn. It’s like a math problem … person not able to be honest with you + your complete trust = problems. Friends + healthy filters on your trust = self-preservation. This is an ongoing issue, but I think the initial boundary setting had a very positive affect on all the boys.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-witzeman/parenting-a-child-with-as_b_468349.html

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(Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

By Maggie Fox | Health and Science Editor (Reuters) | National Post

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Health research is one potential winner in the budget proposed by President Barack Obama Monday, with the National Institutes of Health down for an extra $1 billion for medical research.

It also allocates $25.5 billion for six months to help prop up Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance plan for the poor, and provides $1.4 billion for food safety efforts and $3 billion for AIDS prevention.

Much of the new money goes to basic medical research funded by NIH, which typically pays for projects at academic centers. Some is eventually licensed to drug and biotechnology companies to make into commercial products.

“To accelerate progress in biomedical research, NIH investments will focus on priority areas including genomics, translational research, science to support health care reform, global health, and reinvigorating the biomedical research community,” the budget reads.

Translational research is shorthand for taking basic medical research done in lab dishes or animals into applications that can help people, while genomics is the study of the DNA map.

NIH director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters in an interview last month that he wanted to push his agency to look for quicker “real-world” applications for research, such as turning discovery of a new disease gene into a diagnostic test for the disease.

He also said NIH could do more to help improve the U.S. healthcare system, for instance by conducting comparative effectiveness research to find out which treatments are the best.

Obama’s proposed budget also includes $286 million for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to do comparative effectiveness research.

As it did last year, the budget earmarks $6 billion for cancer research, including the start of 30 new trials in patients in 2011.

And as Obama promised last year, it designates $222 million for autism research. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that one in 110 U.S. children are diagnosed with autism or related disorders, and no one known how much of this is due to better or more complete diagnosis and how much of it may be new.

The total NIH budget rises to $32 billion in 2011 under Obama’s proposal, up from $30 billion in 2009 and an estimated $31 billion in 2010.

Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/life/health/story.html?id=0492c967-327c-4f9f-b17a-6959f6557666

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By General Mills

MINNEAPOLIS – (Business Wire) General Mills has created liveglutenfreely.com to provide consumers with information on gluten-free products and gluten-free recipes. The site lists General Mills products labeled gluten-free and features kitchen-tested recipes for preparing an array of gluten-free foods.

“One of the most frequent inquiries our customer service department receives is ‘What products are gluten-free?’” says Katie Lay, marketing manager, General Mills Health and Wellness division. “Consumers should always consult product labels prior to purchase, but our new website can give them 24/7 access to information about General Mills’ gluten-free products. We also created an electronic newsletter by the same name that consumers can subscribe to when they visit liveglutenfreely.com. Gluten-free product information and gluten-free recipes will be sent directly to their inboxes.

“General Mills is one of the leading food manufacturers responding to consumers concerned about gluten,” says Lay. “We recently launched a line of Betty Crocker gluten-free dessert mixes, and we have many additional products labeled gluten-free. For example, our Yoplait yogurt, LÄRABAR fruit and nut bar, Betty Crocker Fruit Snack, and Chex cereal product lines all contain several gluten-free items. All this information is included on our new site. Anyone who has adhered to a diet of any kind knows that it’s easier when there are a variety of foods to choose from and recipes to help you.”

Michelle Tucker, M.S., registered dietitian and senior scientist of the Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition, says liveglutenfreely.com is a great resource for the one in nine U.S. households watching, reducing or avoiding gluten intake. “The web site is an excellent tool to help the growing number of consumers seeking information on gluten-free foods,” says Tucker. “But consumers need to remember that it’s essential to always read ingredient listings and look for the words gluten free near the nutrition and ingredient list on package labels before adding a food item to their shopping cart.”

Source: Newswire

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Seneca Valley School District physical education teachers Eric Grove and Michael Serventi demonstrate fitness techniques during a presentation by Eric Chessen, left, founder of Autism Fitness. (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette)

By Mark Roth | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Like most parents, those who have children with autism want them to be physically active and healthy.

And like other parents, their first option is often Little League or soccer, says Elliot Frank, chairman of ABOARD, a local autism advocacy and educational group.

“For some of our kids, though, running around a field kicking a ball to put up a point on some abstract scoreboard doesn’t track very well,” Mr. Frank said.

In addition, many children with autism have mild physical disabilities, from toe walking to lack of coordination, that make it difficult for them to succeed in regular team sports.

Or, as autism fitness expert Eric Chessen says, “if kids fail at something over and over, they no longer will want to do it.”

Mr. Chessen, who says he is one of the few people in the nation focusing exclusively on autism and physical fitness, spoke at a conference sponsored by ABOARD Friday at the Regional Learning Alliance in Cranberry.

“You have to be physically fit to participate in sports,” he said, “but you don’t have to participate in sports to be physically fit.” Besides, he said, “there’s a big difference between kids who want to play sports and parents who want their kids to play sports.”

Building on that philosophy, Mr. Chessen, founder of Autism Fitness, a Long Island business, has built a phys ed program for children on the autism spectrum that focuses on five basic movements: pushing, pulling, rotation, squatting and locomotion.

Using volunteers from the physical education staff at the Seneca Valley schools, he demonstrated all five motions, using simple equipment like pouches filled with sand and giant rubber bands.

For pushing, one volunteer lay on his back and threw a sand ball to someone standing over him. For pulling, two people pulled in opposite directions on the oversized rubber band, and a third man pulled back on the center, turning it into a slingshot.

For rotation, two men stood back to back and then swiveled to pass the sand bag to each other; for squatting they stood back to back and passed the sand ball between their legs; and for locomotion, one of them put the rubber band around his waist and tried to run forward while another pulled back on it like a leash.

By teaching such basic movements and then building them into a chain of activities, Mr. Chessen said, “we work to maintain their strengths, overcome their deficits and move on from there.”

Mr. Chessen, 29, got his bachelor’s degree in forensic psychology, but then became a fitness trainer and earned a master’s in exercise physiology at California University of Pennsylvania.

One summer, a friend asked him to develop a fitness program for teenagers with autism in New York City, and “I was fascinated by it, and I thought, this is something really worthwhile for them and also worthwhile professionally for me.”

Brimming with energy and pacing constantly on the stage at the Regional Learning Alliance, Mr. Chessen emphasized how important it is to make sure fitness activities also enhance the children’s emotional control and thinking ability.

Children with autism often have distinctive repetitive behaviors, and “if I’ve got a child who usually jumps up and down and makes a loud vocalization and then runs across the room, and I can substitute working with a medicine ball or moving around like an animal, that gives him a larger repertoire of things to do that are functional that are going to enhance his life overall, and will eradicate some of those maladaptive behaviors.”

The animal movements are a major part of his toolkit, he said, and he made sure that many of the 170 people registered for the conference experienced it firsthand.

After asking everyone to move to the back of the room, he demonstrated a bear crawl, and then asked everybody to use it to get back to their chairs. The movement involved people getting on their feet and hands and kicking their legs upward toward their rear ends as they moved forward, many of them huffing and giggling along the way.

“You can devise an entire fitness program based on animal movements,” Mr. Chessen said, “and my kids especially like the bear crawl, because they love the fact they can kick their own butts.”

The fitness exercises can easily add an educational component, he said. One example is having children jump from one large letter on the floor to another to spell a certain word.

And they enhance education in another way, he said, because study after study has shown that regular exercise helps children think more clearly and have longer attention spans.

In the end, he wants to give the children fitness habits that can last a lifetime. And in the process, he hopes they avoid the maladies that afflict many people later in life.

“These kids already face a lot of challenges,” he said. “To add certain cancers or type 2 diabetes to that would be a real disservice to the population as a whole.”

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09329/1016099-114.stm

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Video Courtesy of KSL.com

By  Press Release

SALT LAKE CITY – Three University of Utah Department of Psychiatry researchers are part of an international team of scientists that has identified a novel region of the human genome that may confer susceptibility to autism.

Using genome information from more than 1,000 families with multiple affected individuals, including more than 150 Utah families, the researchers discovered a region on chromosome 5 that was significantly associated with autism. Their finding highlights the importance of genetic variation in the development of autism, according to a study published Oct. 8, 2009, in Nature.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that leads to impaired social interaction, challenges with communication, repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests. Although autism is a heritable disorder with more than 90 percent heritability by twin and family studies, attempts to identify genes that increase susceptibility to autism have met with limited success.

“Autism and other autism spectrum disorders are complex diseases,” says William M. McMahon, M.D., professor and chairman of psychiatry at the University of Utah School of Medicine and a contributor to the study. “While previous research and familial studies have suggested that there are strong genetic components that predispose to autism, this study adds to accumulating evidence that multiple rare mutations, rather than a single mutation, contribute to autistic susceptibility.”

The scientists first studied 1,031 families, with a total of 1,553 children affected with autism, from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange and U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health repositories. They discovered that variations in a region on chromosome 5 near a gene called semaphorin 5A ( SEMA5A ) were linked to the development of autism. SEMA5A is a gene that is thought to be involved in axonal guidance, the process by which nerve cells send out fibers to conduct electrical impulses.

“Earlier studies have shown that the expression of SEMA5A is lower in the peripheral blood of individuals with autism,” says Hilary Coon, Ph.D., also a co-author on the study and U of U professor of psychiatry. “It is reasonable to think that disruptions in genes involved in how axons in the brain find their correct targets might contribute to autism susceptibility, and this study provides additional evidence implicating SEMA5A.”
To confirm their findings, the researchers performed replication studies using data from the Autism Consortium, Autism Genome Project, and other autism family samples from around the world and Utah. They also compared brain bank tissue from 20 persons with autism to tissue from controls and found that expression of the SEMA5A gene was significantly lower in the brains of those with autism.

“It is worth noting that the genomewide significance of this region on chromosome 5 was only found when the results from the initial large set of families and the replication families were pooled in a meta-analysis,” says Coon. “Nevertheless, SEMA5A is an interesting candidate gene for autism susceptibility because it codes for a protein that is both attractive and inhibitory for developing neurons.”

The study authors also suggest that, based on their findings, there are likely to be multiple rare mutations leading to autism susceptibility and, even when the same gene may be involved in susceptibility across multiple people, there are likely to be differences in the exact mutations from one person to the next. In fact, additional evidence from this study suggests that common genetic variation with moderate to strong effects on the clinical manifestations of autism is unlikely to be found.

“This study really highlights the complexity of the genetics underlying autism,” says Coon. “We are grateful for the enormous effort given by thousands of autism families from around the world, and particularly for the continued involvement of our local families here in Utah. These international collaborations may provide the keys to unlocking the secrets of complex diseases such as autism.”

Judith S. Miller, Ph.D., U of U associate professor of psychiatry, also was a co-author on the study, which was funded in part by Autism Speaks. Additional support for the University of Utah Autism Research Project comes from the Utah Autism Foundation and from the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Media-Newswire.com

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