For more information, visit:

“Link Between Autism And Increased Genetic Change in Regions Of Genome Instability.” Medical News Today. N.p., 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2013. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/258568.php>.

Autism Prevalence at 1 in 50 for School-Age Children

There are as many as one in 50 school age children in the U.S. diagnosed with autism, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a 72 percent increase from 2007. However, researchers attribute the rise to improved detection of autism symptoms by doctors, not more cases.

A telephone survey conducted among 100,000 parents revealed that an estimated 2 percent of children ages 6 to 17 have autism (1 in 50), up from 1.16 percent in 2007, when the study was first conducted. Researchers from the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say that this figure translates to 1 million school age children ages 6 to 17 that were reported by their parents to have autism spectrum disorder. Similar to prior studies, boys were much more likely to have the disorder, comprising nearly all of the overall increase in diagnoses. According to the survey, boys were more than 4 times as likely as girls to be affected by autism, which is generally characterized by difficulty in communication, behavior, and social interaction.

The new findings have markedly increased from just last year, in which data released by the CDC showed 1 in 88 children with autism. Last year’s study involved a review of medical and educational records of 8 year olds in 14 sites around the country. However, data in those records were last collected in 2008, so those results would not differ greatly from the original study done in 2007, which reflected a 1 in 86 figure.

The rise in diagnosed cases points to improvements in the detection of the disorder—symptoms of autism can be seen in children as young as 18 months, and doctors are now encouraged to screen children for developmental delays by age 2. However, the symptoms of mildly affected children often go unnoticed until the child enters school, when difficulties with social interaction become apparent. While the study shows that detection is improving, it still points to the need for earlier diagnosis and intervention.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/21/us-usa-autism-idUSBRE92K00C20130321

Read the full report from The National Center for Health Statistics:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr065.pdf

There is an a

The Social Affairs Ministry’s survey of social services for 2011 shows a 5x increase in incidence of the Autism in Israel over the last 8 years. The number of those diagnosed with Autism increased from 1,507 in 2004 to 7,344 in 2011, about 1,000 new cases each year.  This trending increase in Israel is higher than those born abroad. One statistic the survey in Israel conveys is that nearly 50 percent of the children diagnosed with Autism, live in families in which, according to the social workers’ assessment, there are problems in parental functioning, including addiction. It also indicates that 40 percent of the children live in families where the parents suffer from illnesses and disabilities.

New Jersey’s autism rate nearly doubled in four years, according to new research published December 17, 2012 elaborating on previous national studies. And according to researchers from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, of the 8-year-old children in four samples from New Jersey counties, 1 in 57 had autism in 2006, compared with 1 in 94 just four years earlier. New Jersey’s autism rate is among the highest in the nation.

Boys were five times more likely than girls to have autism in the 2006 study, a widening gap for which scientists have not yet found a cause. Whites were more likely than any other group to be diagnosed, but all groups and both genders showed major increases in the rate of autism from 2002 to 2006.

This study was published six months after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a prevalence study based on 2008 data from one New Jersey county. The 2008 national monitoring study reported that New Jersey had a rate of one in 49 children with autism, surpassed only in Utah.

People with autism have lifelong care and education needs, and these prevalence studies and others across the world provide important information for policymakers as they allocate research and treatment funds. Early treatment, when a child’s brain is still developing, will offer the best chance for maximizing their potential.

Sources:
 

http://www.northjersey.com/news/183892061_N_J__autism_rate_soared_in_4_years.html?c=y&page=2

http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/12/dachel-media-update-israel-nj-autism-rates-soar.html

A new study was published in journal Pediatrics on November 11, 2012 uncovers a possible link between mothers with high fever, flu, antibiotic use and children born with Autism. The study in Denmark looked at nearly 97,000 children ages 8 to 14 who were born in Denmark between 1997 and 2003, only 1 percent of whom were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. The researchers interviewed the mothers during their pregnancy and after delivery about any infections and high fevers they’d experienced while pregnant, as well as whether they had used antibiotics.

Mothers who reported having the flu during their pregnancy were two times more likely to have a child with autism and those whose fever persisted for a week or more before their third trimester were three times more likely to have a child on the autism spectrum, according to the study.Mothers who reported taking one type of antibiotics called macrolides, more commonly known by names like azithromycin or erythromycin, had only a slight increase in risk.

It has been known for some time now from animal studies that a baby’s brain is affected when a female’s immune response is triggered during pregnancy, such as fighting an infection. These initial findings suggest a mother’s immune system may play some role in a baby’s development.

“Any episode of fever may be mistaken for influenza, and not all women infected with influenza virus might have been aware of this,” the researchers wrote. “The association between antibiotics and autism is a novel finding, which requires confirmation.”

Resource:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/11/06/peds.2012-1107

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdFlu/survey-flu-pregnancy-linked-autism/story?id=17682648#.UNB5ouRQSZQ

According to the

 For those with disabilities, the jobless rate fell from 12.9 percent to 12.7 percent last month.  However, due to the rate changes, fewer people with disabilities were looking for work.

 Although the economy as a whole added 146,000 jobs in November, those with disabilities continue to struggle to a greater degree than those of the rest of the population.

 In October 2008, The Labor Department began tracking employment among people with disabilities but due to not enough data compiled they are not able to establish seasonal trends among this population therefore the statistics are not seasonally adjusted.

 People who are over the age of 16 who do not live in institutions are reported on this data.

Since February 2009, the reports are now released monthly.

Please refer to the full article below.

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2012/12/07/november-12-jobs/16918/

The findings of this study led by Dr. Mark Weiser, of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and the Sheba Medical Center; were published in the latest issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. The study was carried out in collaboration with researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the IDF Medical Corps, Kings College London and the University of North Carolina. ASD includes Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) and Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), all neurobehavioral conditions which are characterized primarily by problems with behavior, communication and social skills.

In his research, Weiser and his team discovered by reviewing databases in Israel and Sweden, that ASD has a genetic link with schizophrenia. People with schizophrenic sibling’s, are 12 times more likely to have autism than those without schizophrenic genes in the family, according to the study. Bipolar disorder in a sibling, presented a similar pattern of association, but to a lesser degree.

Three data sets were used to determine the familial connection between the two conditions: one in Israel and two in Sweden.

 In Israel, the database was used under the auspices of the ethics committees, of both the IDF and Sheba Hospital and Tel HaShomer Medical Center. This information included anonymous data, involving more than one million soldiers with ASD and schizophrenia.

The same results were found in all three data sets, noted Weiser. The replication is what makes the finding so significant, and shed’s new light on the genetics of these disorders.

Neurons form pathways in the brain to process and transmit information by electrical and chemical signaling.

This study of brain cells in children with autism comes one step closer to answering a key question – whether the condition originates in utero or after birth in toddlerhood.

Autistic children were found to have about 67% more nerve cells in a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex than children without autism, in a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by scientists at the University of California, San Diego.  The prefrontal cortex is responsible for communication, cognitive functions, decision making and moderating correct social behavior – areas which autistic children have difficulty with.

Lead researcher Eric Courchesne studied the brains of seven autistic boys between the ages of 2 and 16 post mortem and used analysis of the brains of six unaffected boys who died at similar ages to compare.

Although larger brain sizes in children with autism is not a new discovery, this is the first study that may have found which type of brain cells are responsible.

Neurons in all areas of the brain except those responsible for smell, memory and navigation are generated before birth.  “The present findings add significantly to mounting biological evidence that the developmental neuropathology of idiopathic autism begins before birth in some, possibly all cases,” Janet E. Lainhart, MD of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and Nicholas Lange, ScD, of the Harvard University Schools of Medicine and Public Health in Boston, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

“Knowing that we have a specific type of defect that occurs very early in development really helps us to focus and sharpen the next steps in research to determine what caused the excess,” says Courchesne. And hopefully find new treatments that can help children and their families cope better with the symptoms of autism.

According to Courchesne this finding that autism children have excess neurons is quite surprising.

“When we think of the inability to handle complicated information, we usually think of too little in the way of connections or brain cells,” he says. “But this is just the opposite.”

This surplus of neurons may have led to problems with their ability to connect and communication with each other. Courchesne suggests this may be causing a lack of proper nerve connections in autistic children, slowing down and stopping normal active interaction between different parts of the brain.

This study shows an exciting new avenue for further research.  The sample of autism cases in this study wasn’t big enough to determine links with behavior. Also a wider sample would need to be gathered of the non-autistic cases that were being used for comparison.  Further research will also need to be done to see if similar results are also found in girls with autism.

Curemark reported the drug was now in phase-3 trial and showing statistically significant effects on symptoms of autism compared with a placebo on core and non-core symptoms. Curemark said the analysis of the full trial data is ongoing and the results will be presented at an upcoming medical meeting.

“We are extremely pleased with the results of our trial,” Curemark CEO Joan Fallon said. “We wish to thank all the children and their parents who participated in the study and look forward to a full review of the data by the FDA.”

The Food and Drug Administration has granted the drug fast-track status, a standard procedure for investigational drugs to treat serious or life-threatening conditions that may concentrate on chronic medical needs that have gone untreated.

The International Center for Autism Research and Education (ICare4Autism), a New York City-based non-profit organization, held a special Breakfast event honoring the Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat in a meeting with leading philanthropists and professionals in New York City at the offices of J. Morton Davis, Chairman of D.H. Blair Investment Banking Corporation on November 8^th, 2011. Mayor Barkat spoke about the importance of ICare4Autism’s Global Autism Center on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem, Israel, the first such center of its kind globally.  Co-Chairing the event was John A Catsimatidis, CEO of the Red Apple Group and Gristedes Foods.

When it opens in 2014, the Center’s 5-acre campus will feature a state-of-the-art on site research facility; the world’s first university-level school of autism studies; an educational center applying the latest research and technology to the special needs of autistic students across the autistic spectrum; and a foundation to support the transformation of autism education and treatment worldwide.

In addition to these existing program plans, Dr. Joshua Weinstein, Founder & CEO of ICare4Autism announced an important new initiative: the world’s first Comprehensive Autism Workforce Development Center. The Workforce Development Center will provide preparation for workforce entry; vocational training and employment services in more than a dozen fields ranging from semi-skilled to the high tech sector; specialized support to persons with Asperger’s Syndrome, and ongoing job coaching and mentoring.

Dr. Eric Hollander, the chairman of the advisory committee for ICare4Autism explained why the Global Autism Center is so important now, “The Global Autism Center will bring together the large scale data and collaborative networks urgently needed to drive breakthrough genetic and epigenetic autism research.  These networks do not yet exist, and no other organization is building them. It will create the world’s first integrated platform for cross disciplinary collaboration between biomedical researchers and educators. The creation of such a platform is critical to global efforts to foster early detection and effective intervention. And finally, having the Global Autism Center in Jerusalem will have a powerful and transformative impact on the Israeli autism community, bringing the world’s leading researchers into close collaboration with their Israeli colleagues and rapidly bringing their most important advances to Israelis with autism.”

Harvey Seifter, Director of Special Projects at ICare4Autism discussed ICare4Autism’s plans to convene the world’s first Autism Philanthropy Summit in Jerusalem next year.  The two objectives of the summit will be: to increase collaboration and cooperation among existing players in autism philanthropy; and to increase overall investment in autism globally by bringing new players to the table.

Commenting on the Global Autism Center, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said, “The work of ICare4Autism is critical for those affected by autism around the globe. I am honored to be a part of this groundbreaking project and will do everything in my power to assist in making it come to fruition.”

Mr. Davis remarked, “I’m grateful to all who join me in support of this center that will improve the lives of so many people affected by autism, and the vital work of ICare4Autism as it strives to bring together researchers and professionals under one roof to collaborate and find a cure for autism.”

Joshua Weinstein said, “We at ICare4Autism are very excited about the new developments in the strategic planning for the Global Autism Center and are so grateful for all the support of so many leaders in the global community.”

John A Catsimatidis added, “I am very enthusiastic about this much needed center that is so critical now that we are seeing the numbers of children and people with autism on the rise all over the world.”

For information about ICare4autism’s Global Autism Center in Jerusalem, please contact: krobinson@ICare4Autism.org

Dakota, Noah, Tristan, Dillon, Gianna, Layla Conn (Aug. 2008)

Recently, I came across a TV segment, online, that spoke with the Conn family of Lincoln, California that has two sons with autism. On the segment, the California mother set a superb example of how a parent can set a positive outlook for children on their own diagnosis. I found this to be outstanding because to often people are either opening sad and disappointed by the diagnosis or try to bandage it up in various ways. Please view this clip from KCRA 3- Sacramento, California and share your input with the other readers.

When asked to describe her children autism, the mother explained “The look very typical but they don’t half the time understand, perception is way, way different. If a baby is crying next them they will not do anything. They will not help the baby, they hear the baby, but it doesn’t sound like anything to them, at all. They just don’t care.

To View the Video on KCRA-3′s YOU TUBE page please CLICK HERE