Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder is a group of disabilities that cause impairment in social, cognitive and behavioral areas in a person. Although, up until now, only 65 genes were known as part of the autism-risk spectrum, new research has estimated there are between 400 and 1,000 genes that might be involved in this disorder.

These results bring on new opportunities to study, keep researching and testing new genes in order to pin down more information about autism through its genetic basis. This is highly important because geneticists will be able to carry on with genome sequencing studies in order to explore deeper to find out how autism arises and possible, in a not so far off future, find a way to treat it. Being one of the most common developmental disorders of our times, this is great news.

About 1 per cent of the population of the US has some type of autism and although inclusion and understanding for this group have grown exponentially in the last few years, there is still much left to do in order to offer better opportunities and solutions to both people with autism and their families and loved ones. These type of investigations being carried out by some of the best scientists in the world take us all one step closer to understanding and offering these solutions.

Around 35% of young adults with autism never carry on beyond high school education and don’t have any kind of job. Autism can present itself in different ranges in different people and the challenges it represents are different for each individual; although some of them might be able to go on to college and/or have stable jobs, large numbers of people with autism are left out of the social circle they would benefit most from.

Raising awareness about this disorder is extremely important and the type of discoveries made in this kind of research bring us closer to the reality of what is happening and to solutions that might benefit all of us. Check out this paper in Princeton University’s site and find out more about the processes carried out to get to this point.

Source: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S47/03/24S01/index.xml?section=topstories