Autism is genetic

[jonesonscam]

The National Autistic Society has just said something pretty significant: Autism is genetic. Not “possibly genetic”. Not “we’re not really sure what causes it”.

After reviewing 83 research papers, the NAS is now stating definitively that autism is genetic. You’re born autistic and you’re autistic for life. Most autistic people are autistic because of genes they inherited from their parents.

I think this matters enormously because for decades, autism has been surrounded by nonsense about vaccines, parenting, mothers doing something wrong, pregnancy, diet and a million other things.

It has left parents blaming themselves, and autistic people being told that something caused them to be autistic that could somehow have been prevented.

There isn't an “autism gene”. Thousands of genes are involved, and genetics is complicated. But the basic message is now remarkably clear: autism isn't something that happened to someone. It's something they were born with.

That matters because when we stop looking for something to blame, we can start looking at what actually matters: understanding autistic people, supporting them properly, and making a society that works for them.

This all feels like a pretty important shift.

This has been obvious to me for a very long time. I am autistic, have two autistic siblings and an autistic ds. I believe it's been obvious to researchers as well - at least since the late 90s. My family participated in genetic studies at the time.

All the stuff about aged sperm is just correlation. It's quite obvious that (and why) a man with autism will generally breed later than a man without autism.

I think of more interest would be something that actually gets the spectrum onto a scale with things that people can and can't do so that people can get the help they need. Some autistic people can do 50 years without help/support/intervention. Others can't do 50 minutes.

I believe it's genetic but I also believe I caused my eldest child (now a non verbal adult with the mind of a baby) to be born with a severe learning disability and autism.

I myself am on the spectrum (diagnosed in adulthood) as are my three younger children.

When pregnant with my eldest I should have taken time off work to avoid a vile sickness bug that was sweeping through the nursing home where I worked. I was only a few weeks pregnant.
I didn't stand up to my boss who insisted I came into work. I was too much of a coward. I put the residents and staff before my unborn baby.
Needless to say I caught the bug and was violently ill.
My first scan revealed he was small for dates. I was monitored throughout and he caught up with his growth but I have and always will blame myself. The guilt is unbearable.

Yes, this.
I can see why they want to combat misinformation about vaccines and paracetamol.

What they haven't done is shown that two children, same genome raised differently, would both be autistic or not autistic. Nobody has identified a gene or group of genes or demonstrated how autism actually arises. There is research talking about several 'autisms' and how the boundaries of the condition are constructed. None of this is resolved by the announcement. We don't know yet.

I think most people have understood that autism is genetic for quite some time- not caused by environmental factors.

I work with plenty of children who are diagnosed or suspected to have autism and the minute you meet the parents you usually think, "Aha!", as inevitably at least one of them shows autistic traits too.

I don't think there's any evidence of gastric viruses in pregnancy causing autism, I wish you could stop blaming yourself, parenting an adult with serious disabilities including non verbal autism is harder than anything most people will ever do, and you shouldn't be carrying that awful unwarranted guilt along with that! 💐☕

You weren't a coward. That wasn't your fault. I hope you can talk to someone about this. You are parenting four children with additional needs. That is amazing.

Yes I can well imagine that the older fathers could correlate because autistic men are more likely to become fathers later, rather than because of older sperm (although it is a fact that the rate of de novo mutations in sperm increases with age).

My point was more that maternal age hasn't particularly been correlated, but rather paternal age has.

I remember listening to Simon Barron Cohen saying - if your sibling is diagnosed with autism you are 200 times more likely to also be autistic.

I can can see the genetic thread running through our family but only one is formally diagnosed.

Yes I agree - or indeed re-examine the previous paradigm of Autisms plural. It's not what the very articulate activists want though, and they have a much louder voice than complex individuals with disorders of functional language, unsurprisingly...

Yeah I thought we knew it was genetic in the vast majority of cases.

It is soooo much harder to be autistic in today’s world. Only today, out and about in a small town I’ve had to leave a cafe due to someone’s excessively strong fragrance wafting over and a woman at another table talking on speakerphone the whole time. Driving my hire car I was assailed by beeping the whole time as it thought I was over the speed limit. I was nearly run over by e bikes in the pedestrian precinct and startled by several yapping dogs. Last night I was exhausted to even get here as I was blinded by bright LED headlights on the roads. At the airport every passenger is obliged to run the gauntlet of a perfume shop with music blaring, excessively bright lights and visual overstimulation. Smartphones are required for every transaction. Everywhere you turn there is sensory overstimulation and many many choices and decisions to take. The world of my childhood was less “loud”, in pretty much every way.

Its not finding love later due to their quirkiness, its because they have a social disability which makes them unattractive partners to most people, as they don't understand how to relate to other people in an emotionally intimate relationship.

Quite a number of people who unsuspectingly marry an undiagnosed autistic man, when they come to realise he is autistic ( maybe diagnosed later in life) realise that one of their parents was also autistic and this is why they accepted a partner others found undesirable. Because that behaviour was normal to them and so, even if they did not like it, it did not red flag to them as a reason to end the relationship. It had become normalised as behaviour you expect and put up with.

I cannot agree that autism is a difference. It is a disability and can be significantly socially disabling, especially in terms of romantic or parenting relationships ( ie when they have kids of their own). I think society needs to eb more honest about this so that more specialist support is provided, especially for families where there is an autistic parent. And that needs to start from the basis of it being a disability, not a difference.

My sister is the only one in our family with an autism diagnosis and her father (who has no proper social skills and a deep fixation on knights and how he could have been a knight and has armour and a fake broadsword in his study) was shocked!
Our mother (who believes everything anyone tells her and has a ridiculously high need for justice in all situations, and can't wear wool because it makes her skin feel "like it belongs to someone else", flies into a rage if her train of thought is interrupted and has eaten the same packed lunch for 52 years and gets a little wound up if she needs to eat something different unless there is two - three business days worth of notice ) also couldn't believe it.
She pointed at me, her perfectly normal child who just likes fixed routines, and can't really deal with loud noises or the texture of eggs, as proof that there cannot be a smidgen of autism in our family and that the doctors were being a bit daft.

This news may not be welcome in our house 🤣

There have definitely been twin studies - the first was in 1977 - (Folstein and Rutter). That's why it's been known for years and years that it's genetic and this opening AI written post is a bit of an odd "revelation".

What's not known is which genes (aside from where autism correlates with a chromosomal disorder). Another poster said there are studies identifying the genes, but hasn't linked to them - as far as I'm aware they have not been completed, or not been published, because of fears of genetic testing and selective abortions.

It's pretty well established that where one identical twin is Autistic the other is incredibly likely to be - although different studies give different results its always above 60% for identical twins and around 35% for non identical twins.

This is a recent (open access) analysis of existing identical twin studies (366 pairs of id twins) which comes out with 96% concordance, which is obviously astonishingly high. The study argues trait expression is environmental though.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-019-09987-2

Look at it from the scientists' point of view though....(and this is not intended to cause offence in any way, science facts can be harsh)

Mr ElephantInTheRoom (M) and MrsElephantInTheRoom (F) have reproduced together 4 times and each time has resulted in offspring with autism.

The common factors are M and F who have merged their gene pools 4 times, each time resulting in autistic children.

There is potentially something in the way their genes combine that results in autism just like it is said that the red-hair gene is present in both parents if the offspring have red hair. The parents themselves may not be red-heads but they carry the red hair gene.

If F had married and had children with someone else, their children might not have been autistic and similarly for M but they might have been autistic, as this is a hypothetical situation as the couple did not split up and reproduce with other partners.

Yes I've seen them. Thing is twin studies used to mean something different- genetically identical twins raised separately to separate nature and nurture. Then it became looking at identical and fraternal differences and calling the additional effect of being identical the 'nature' bit. But you can't untangle all the interacting effects of both- e.g. that a child's temperament then affects how they are parented.

The NAS announcement makes it sound as if its settled that autism is 100% genetic and so, presumably, is 'not being autistic'. That is very much not settled. Although the full statement adds a bit of nuance.

Im not at all surprised that autism is genetic and I'm glad this is increasingly a common knowledge.

I do think the shape of our modern lives, the environment, the expectations and our education system are increasing de-optimised for high functioning autists - and so that, along with better understanding and identification, means we appear to have an explosion in a neurodiversity which hasn't actually altered in prevelance.

But as we know 'Autism is genetic' and clusters with other Neurodiversity/ mental illness (new mutations for schizophrenia are also associated with older paternal age/ poor sperm health), therefore this Mum with her 'ridicolous' statement that you are mocking is likely neurodiverse and possibly mentally ill too.

I thought we always knew you were born with it. Environment doesn’t affect it.

Genetic often means genes passed on.

You can get de novo genes too.

I always thought the description for born with something rather than inheriting it was congenital?

(Will google to check my understanding!)

Clearly your extensive survey comprehensively negates the conclusion that the NAS reached from reviewing 83 research papers.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/congenital

Sorry, I obviously can't read - you were referring to identical twins raised differently. Obviously that would be a research study that would be rejected because it's unethical, so no, although it would be interesting it doesn't exist. Even if it did, it wouldn't be valid really as the attachment issues of removing one twin at birth would be too much of a wild card!

Im also diagnosed with both ADHD and Autism so a fellow AuDHDer. I did mean to say that screening should rule out those who fit the C-PTSD only criteria. Definitely agree that those of us with Autism and ADHD are more likely to also have additional trauma. My DD would also agree. Some of the things she was pushed to do at school alongside the support she initially didn't get for a long time have definitely left their mark.

Sadly it's like the gift that keeps on giving. Amplified massively during menopause, hence why so many middle aged women were put in institutions years ago, and why so many were just shoved on valium in the 1960s and 70s. We finally get some recognition for how much it affects us now (and finally get diagnosed, often decades late) and yet some folk who don't get it, love to shove the boot in telling us we 'all mask' etc etc

Anyway, solidarity, and sorry for the waffle.

Environment and age of the father pre-natally does effect it, by causing new mutations responsible for Autism, ADHD and Schizophrenia amongst other things, and is therefore a modifiable risk factor.

After years of women being told 'tick tock' biological clock, terrible decision making delaying to after 35 etc etc, turns out that men are a massive part of the problem too.

Congenial includes environmental exposure to toxins and viruses in the womb - it's fairly crucial to differentiate that from genetic factors.