A team from Yale School of Medicine have found an abnormality in the placenta which could be the first indication of autism and they believe the discovery could lead to a diagnosis of the condition at birth, rather than the standard age of two or older.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that has profound effects on socialization, communication, learning and other behaviours and usually develops by age two.
It affects one in every 200 children and the earlier the diagnosis is made, the more effective the treatment can be; experts say a diagnosis at birth would be ideal.
Senior author of the study Harvey J. Kliman, M.D., research scientist in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the Yale School of Medicine, had found in earlier work that there was a unusual feature in the placentas from children with Asperger Syndrome, an ASD condition which, like autism, impairs the ability to relate to others.
The abnormality was an unusual folding of the surface layers of the placenta, that tends to trap a class of cells called trophoblasts as "inclusions" within the layers which can be easily seen with a microscope.
By working with researchers at the Yale Child Study Center who had access to many cases of children with ASD, Kliman was able to design a study to examine whether the trophoblast inclusions, was a marker for ASD.