Tyler+C.


 * Wikipost #1 Genetics: Why is autism more common in boys? We may be on the cusp of knowing.**

"Decades of research have shown that males are at far greater risk for neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than females. Boys, on average, are five times more likely to have autism than girls . What causes this disparity has largely remained unknown.

Researchers have recently discovered that the reason for this is most likely due to the fact that females apparently have a higher tolerance to genetic mutation meaning they require a larger number of certain genetic mutations or in other words have a higher "threshold" than males in regards to obtaining a genetic deficiency however this also means that when a female does obtain a genetic deficiency it is usually far more severe a case than in males. This could also be linked to the fact that boys are also more commonly diagnosed with intellectual disabilities like ADHD.

After examining 16'000 boys and girls researchers discovered that girls with ASD typically had cases 1.3 to 3 times more severe than cases found in males. This suggests that males require smaller more subtle doses of genetic mutation to trigger these disorders were females need higher "doses" of mutation to potentially trigger these disorders.

The question now preventing further development of this information is that scientists aren't quite sure what prompts the mutations to develop into a neorodevelopmental genetic disorder. However we do know that part of the reason for females increased resistance to the development of neurodevelopmental disorders is in part due to the likely suggestion that females have an increased burden of mutations unlinked to harmful mutation variants in their x chromosome. Another contributing factor specifically in the case of autism is that studies show a variant of a gene consistently found in males that could be linked to the disorder found in males

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A video describing how close we are in discovering the genetic cause(s) of autism
 * Further Reading**
 * http://www.cell.com/AJHG/retrieve/pii/S0002929714000597#cor1**
 * http://www.everydayhealth.com/autism/searching-for-cause.aspx**
 * References**
 * http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/02/27/genetics-may-explain-why-autism-is-more-common-in-boys/#.UxE21YWxyM9**
 * http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297%2813%2900281-4**
 * http://www.everydayhealth.com/autism/boys-and-girls.aspx**