For parents who already have a child with autism, there?s usually an anxious waiting period to see if the next child will develop autism, one where every developmental milestone is tracked and the often-curious behaviours of infants and toddlers scrutinized.
That?s because the average risk for autism in the general population is about 1.5 percent, but that jumps to an estimated 7 percent to 20 percent for babies who have an older sibling with autism.
Canadian researchers are hoping a genetic test could help predict whether the child will go on to develop autism or not.
?We hear from parents all the time how challenging it can be to access a diagnosis and access intervention because sometimes the early signs of autism can be quite subtle,? says Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Alberta.
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5 golden rules for parenting the siblings of a kid with autism
In a study published earlier this month led by Zwaigenbaum and Stephen Scherer, director of the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, researchers analyzed the DNA of 288 infants with older siblings who had already been diagnosed with autism. They looked for genetic differences and narrowed down 15 variants that they considered to b...