News and Features Related to Autism

1. Parent's Mental Illness and Kid's Autism
   

   May 5, 2008 -- Children born to a parent with schizophrenia or certain other mental illnesses may have an increased risk for autism, new research suggests. Parents of children diagnosed with autism were roughly twice as likely to have been hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder such as schizophreni

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2. Study Suggests Preemie, Autism Link
   

   April 2, 2008 -- Very premature birth may be a major risk factor for autism, but more study is needed to confirm the association, researchers say. One out of four very-low-birth-weight babies -- weighing as little as 1 pound at birth and no more than 3.3 pounds -- showed signs of autistic behavior w

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3. Parents of Autistic Kids Take Income Hit
   

   April 2, 2008 -- Parents of children with autism earn 14% less than parents who don't have autistic kids. That news appears in April's edition of Pediatrics. The finding is based on 11,000 U.S. children in kindergarten through eighth grade. The group included 131 children diagnosed with an autism sp

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4. Autism-Vaccine Link: Evidence Doesn't Dispel Doubts
   

   Autism and vaccines: It's the link that just won't die. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the World Health Organization, and the Institute of Medicine all agree that there's probably no relationship between autism and vaccines. But if the case is that solid, why do so many people remain u

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5. Autism Cases on the Rise; Reason for Increase a Mystery
   

   The number of children diagnosed with autism or related disorders has grown at what many call an alarming rate. In the 1970s and 1980s, about one out of every 2,000 children had autism. Today, the CDC estimates that one in 150 8-year-olds in the U.S. has an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. This exp

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6. Treating Autism: One Child's Story
   

   Stories about children with autism are not always happy. But when Debbie Page tells about her son, Gabe, it's a story of hope. The Pages are lucky, in a way: Gabe, born in February 2003, is not as severely impaired as other children with autism. And the Pages, who live outside of Baltimore, are also

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7. Autism: Making the Diagnosis
   

   Diagnosing autism or autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a group of brain-based disorders that become apparent in early childhood, is often no simple task for a number of reasons. No specific medical tests are available to diagnose ASD, so the diagnosis is made based on the observations of parents, phy

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8. Finding the Right Autism Treatment
   

   Parents are using nearly 400 different treatments for their children with autism. They can't all be wrong. They can't all be right. Welcome to the shaky ground on which parents find themselves when they learn that their child may -- or may not -- have autism. The pace of scientific research is frust

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9. Asperger's Syndrome: Secret to Success
   

   While autism spectrum disorder appears on many radar screens today, this wasn't the case when Temple Grandin was growing up in the 1950s. Grandin, now 60, didn't utter a word until she was 3 1/2 years old. As a result, she was labeled "autistic," and her parents were told she should be institutional

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10. The Challenges of Raising a Child With Autism
    

    Looking back, Cori Ayala understands that the signs made sense. Before her son Evan was diagnosed with autism at age 3, he had behaved differently from his older brother, Alex. Evan was happy and affectionate, Ayala says. But "he developed pretty rigid routines that had to be adhered to or he would

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