Women who are obese when pregnant may have a higher risk of having a baby with autism, a new study indicates.

Researchers found that the risk of autism increased by nearly 70 percent when moms were obese during their pregnancies, while the risk of a having a baby with some other neurodevelopmental disorder doubled, according to the study published early online Monday in Pediatrics.

Click here to read the study.

Milder versions of autism, such as Asperger's syndrome and related conditions, form a "spectrum" of autism-related disorders. In addition, impairments in any one of the autism-related cognitive skill areas are considered developmental delays.

To take a closer look at the impact of obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy, the researchers compared medical histories of 315 typically developing children to those of 517 children with autism and 172 children with developmental disorders.

Moms with diabetes were slightly more likely to have a baby with autism, but the numbers weren’t large enough for the researchers to be sure that the association wasn’t just by chance. The association between a mom’s diabetes and some other neurodevelopmental disorder was stronger. In fact, diabetic moms were more than twice as likely to have a child later diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Researchers have been looking for preventable factors that contribute to the rise in the number of children with autism,  said Dr. Andrew W. Zimmerman, director of clinical trials at the Lurie Center for Autism at the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children who is also on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  “It’s very suggestive that this might be a real factor,” Zimmerman said.

That doesn’t mean that every obese woman is going to have a child with autism, he added. “But it’s one of the many things that goes into increasing the risk.”

Zimmerman would like to see more research on the topic. “Hopefully a larger one yet will be able to show what the effect of gestational diabetes is,” he said. “That’s a bigger question since a lot of women who don’t have any sign of diabetes develop gestational diabetes.”

It's unclear whether diabetes or obesity is actually impacting the growth of the fetus, but it’s always possible that these women have something else in common, said the study’s lead author Paula Krakowiak, a Ph. D. candidate at the University of California, Davis. But, said Krakowiak, “we’re seeing a rise in the rates of obesity and diabetes as well as a rise in autism.”

Krakowiak and her colleagues don’t yet know how obesity and diabetes might impact babies’ brain development, but they have some theories.

A possible culprit is the inflammatory proteins produced by the fat cells of an obese mom. “These same proteins are involved in the normal development of the brain,” Krakowiak said. “When the level of those immunological markers is higher or lower than the normal range it might affect how the brain develops in an adverse way. And at least one type has been shown to be able to cross over the placenta to the fetus.”

It’s also possible that the higher levels of blood glucose in obese and diabetic women could have a negative impact on the developing brain, since glucose can also cross over to the fetus, Krakowiak said. High levels of glucose could cause the baby to produce more insulin and also to grow faster, she added.

“When they’re growing at a faster rate, they require more oxygen and if the mom doesn’t provide enough oxygen then that could also cause some problems with brain development,” Krakowiak said.

Typically, a woman is considered obese when she's about 35 pounds overweight or more, or has a body-mass index of 25, experts say.

Krakowiak and her colleagues didn’t have information on inflammatory markers or insulin resistance in the moms in this study. That’s a subject for future research, she said.

Until researchers know more, obese moms might want to take the new findings as another reason to lose weight,  Krakowiak said.

“That’s the safest message,” she added. “It doesn’t hurt anybody to lose weight and it comes with other benefits to the mom. So losing weight not only will help you, but it also might potentially help your child to be healthier.”

Reuters contributed to this report

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Courtesy of the Melville family

When Danny Melville, show with his mom Karen, was diagnosed at the age of 2 as being severely autistic, his parents were told he might not ever talk. Now the 7-year is eager to share his interests with his family and will enter a mainstream classroom next year.

Karen Melville remembers when her son Danny was diagnosed with autism so severe that his doctor feared he might never even talk, much less go to school. “It was like a freight train hit,” said Melville, a 39-year-old mother of two who lives in Brunswick, Ohio.

Five years of intensive therapy have paid off. Danny, now age 7, is OK’d to go to school next year in a mostly mainstream class that will have a total of three “high functioning” kids with autism.  “Now when he finds something he thinks is really cool on the computer -- like a humpback whale swimming -- he wants to show me,” Melville said.

Danny may be one of what researchers are now calling “bloomers” – kids who start out as severely affected but who manage to grow beyond most of their symptoms.

About 10 percent of children who are severely affected by autism at age 3 seem to have “bloomed” by age 8, leaving behind many of the condition’s crippling deficits, a new study shows. And while these “bloomers” still retain some of autism’s symptoms, like the tendency to rock back and forth when stressed or to repeat the same behavior over and over, they become what experts dub, “high functioning,” according to the study published today in Pediatrics. That means their social skills and their ability to communicate have vastly improved.

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A child at the low end of the communication scale might not be able to talk, or even to make any sounds, explained the study’s lead author Christine Fountain, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Those at the other end of the scale “would have a broad vocabulary, understand the meaning of words and use them in appropriate contexts, understand the meaning of story plot and carry on complex conversations,” she explained.

Similarly, a child with a low score on the social scale would have problems interacting with others and would not be able to make friends or socialize. At the high end of the scale, is a child who “would initiate one-on-one interactions with both peers and others in familiar and unfamiliar settings, initiate and maintain friendships, and not need encouragement to participate in social activities,” Fountain said.

”Bloomers” are edging up towards the upper half of both those scales.

Fountain and her colleagues didn’t expect to see kids jump from the low end to the high end in just a few short years. “It was a surprise to see how much improvement they showed – and how quickly,” Fountain said. “That’s kind of hopeful message.”

Hopeful because the odds of such big improvements might rise if more kids got the right kind of therapy early in life, Fountain said. 

The researchers studied the records of 6,975 California children who had been diagnosed with autism. They found that many of the children showed improvements between ages 3 and 8, but some, the bloomers, showed startling progress, moving from the most severely affected to some of the highest functioning.

Kids who are older can continue to make progress, but more slowly, experts say. While many of their symptoms fade, they still retain the autism diagnosis.

Fountain and her colleagues suspect, after scrutinizing the differences between children who bloomed and those who didn’t, that it likely comes down to which kids were able to get early, intensive therapy since the children who improved the most had parents with more education and financial wherewithal. Researchers say that it’s possible there might be something inherently different about the children themselves who are “bloomers,” but they don’t know that for sure.

As they delved into the bloomers backgrounds, the researchers found that these children were more likely than others to have mothers with at least a high school education and to come from a higher socio-economic class. (They didn’t have information on the fathers.) Bloomers also tended not to have any intellectual disabilities.

The findings don’t surprise autism expert Tamar Apelian.

“Most children need about 30 to 40 hours a week of intervention,” said Apelian, a staff psychologist at the autism evaluation clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles. “What’s tricky is being able to navigate the system to get the therapy, especially with the state budget crisis. The parents who do this seem to have more means and they can hire an advocate or a lawyer.”

And that’s where parents’ backgrounds come in to play.

After absorbing Danny’s diagnosis at 25 months, Karen asked his doctor about the future. “I said, ‘OK, what can we do about it?’ The doctor said, ‘How much money do you have?’”

The Melville’s weren’t independently wealthy. They were comfortably middle class – but that certainly doesn’t pay for therapy that can cost upwards of $70,000 per year. So that meant the Melvilles had to be creative to get Danny what he needed.

While Danny waited for his turn to come up on program waiting lists the Melvilles found a student to work with him. In the meantime, Danny’s dad, Michael, went back to school to get certified as a pharmacy tech so he could get a job at a university that came with benefits including a break on Danny’s therapy.

The family scraped together money from a variety of sources and finally managed to get Danny into an intensive program that offered one-on-one help.  

“When I think back, I think about how I sat and watched for hours waiting for him to make that first sound,” Karen said. “I think about how grim things looked. I can’t stress enough that people determine what it is their children need and then get on those waiting lists. Keep digging and fighting to find someone to start with. It doesn’t matter if it’s a student while you’re on the waiting list. It’s just so important to get help early."

Do you know an autistic child? Has anything helped lessen the symptoms? Tell us on Facebook.

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By Robert Bazell
Chief science and medical correspondent
NBC News

During the briefing for reporters Thursday on the CDC’s latest findings that one in 88 children in the U.S. (one in 54 boys) has a diagnosis of some brain disorder that falls on the “autism spectrum,” there was a polite but revealing dust up.  Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conceded –in response to a question– that the increase in cases could be the result in changes in the way such disorders are diagnosed.  Then Mark Roithmayr, president of Autism Speaks, the biggest activist organization concerned with the disorder, said he begged to differ.  Maybe half the cases, Roithmayr insisted, must be due to some as yet identified environmental factors.

Click here to read what every parent should know about autism.

Last January  Dr. Fred Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center, created a far bigger controversy when the New York Times reported he had said new definitions of autism about to come from The American Psychiatric Association could effectively end the autism surge. ''We would nip it in the bud,'' the Times quoted Dr. Volkmar.

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Volkmar was not available today, but I interviewed his colleague Dr. James McPartland, who did not back down from that view.

“People who might have been diagnosed with something else in the past are now being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder," McPartland said.  By “something else,” McPartland means problems that used to be labeled as ranging from “mental retardation” to “learning disabilities.”

“The way we diagnose autism spectrum disorder has changed,” McPartland continued.  “We're more inclusive. We include people with more cognitive ability and less severe problems then we have in the past.”

Anyone who spends time around children diagnosed on the “autistic spectrum” knows that it is indeed wide.  Many have the severe withdrawal and lack of ability to engage in social interactions that characterize classical autism.  But others seem high functioning and verbal.

Scientists have spent a lot of time looking for genetic changes that might account for disorders labeled as autism.  More than 500 genes have so far been implicated indicating that no clear genetic cause will be implicated.

As for environmental factors, there are strong suggestions that older parents, especially fathers can increase the risk as can multiple births. But none of that could account for more than a fraction of the enormous increase (78 per cent since 2002 when the CDC started tracing autism.)  The alleged association with childhood vaccinations has been widely discredited by scientists although a few hard core activists still cling to it.

So that takes us back to diagnosis.  Whatever it is called, there can be no doubt that a lot of kids need special attention – and the sooner they get it, the better off they are.  What a problem is called matters less than how society copes with it.

Rachael Rettner
MyHealthNewsDaily

Adriana Lara, a mother in Hutto, Texas, is not able to work because her 5-year old son Joshua has autism. Lara must stay home to give Joshua the care he needs, and to drive him to his therapy sessions five days a week.

"It's just impossible for me to be able to hold a job and do all these things with Josh," Lara, 31, said. The family depends on the salary of Lara's husband, a psychologist at a Veteran's Affairs hospital.

Joshua's therapies, including speech, music and occupational therapy, cost about $5,000 a month. Eighty-five percent of the cost is currently covered by a government grant, but the grant will run out this summer, and the family's insurance policy won't cover Joshua's therapies, Lara said.

"We don’t know how we're going to afford it," Lara said. While public schools offer autism therapies, Joshua's school does not offer the type of intensive therapies he needs, Lara said. For instance, the therapies provided by Joshua's school are not one-on-one, Lara said.

A new study highlights the unique financial burden faced by families of children with autism, like Lara's. The burden is particularly significant for mothers, the study finds.

On average, mothers of autistic children earn $14,755 less per year than mothers of healthy children, and $7,189 less per year than mothers of children with other health conditions (such as asthma and ADHD) that limit their ability to engage in childhood activities, according to the study.

Despite the fact that they tend to have completed more years of education, mothers of autistic children are 6 percent less likely to be employed, and they work on average 7 hours less weekly than mothers of healthy children, the researchers say.

"We don't think that autism creates more of a strain on the family per se than other chronic conditions of childhood," said study researcher David Mandell, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. "I think the reason these mothers are leaving the workforce is because the service system for children with autism is so fragmented," Mandell said.

Health care and workplace policies need to recognize the full impact of autism, and alleviate costs for the families with greatest needs, the researchers concluded, writing in the March 19 issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Higher bills, lower salaries

About 1 in 110 children in the United States have an autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disability that can cause language delays, impaired communication skills and social challenges, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new study results are based on yearly surveys of U.S. households conducted between 2002 and 2008. The study included 64,349 families with healthy children, 2,921 families of children with other health limitations and 261 families of children with autism.

While fathers' salaries, by themselves, were not affected by having a child with autism, total family income was, the study showed. On average, families with autistic children earned $17,763 less than families with healthy children, and $10,416 less than families with children with other health limitations.

As Lara's story shows, having a child with autism may limit the parents' abilities to work because these children require more care. Finding quality, specialized childcare for autistic children may be difficult and costly, the researchers say.

"A traditional daycare setting really is really not conducive," for children with autism to thrive, said Carolyn Price, whose 7-year old son has autism. Autistic children are very sensitive to sights and sounds, and may be overwhelmed at a day care, Price said.

When Price's son was in daycare — before he was diagnosed with autism — he would bite other children because he couldn't cope with the environment, Price said. In addition, autistic children need one-on-one interaction that is generally not feasible at day care, Price said.

When Price's son, also named Joshua, was young and had to be at home, she and her husband felt uncomfortable having anyone beside themselves or close friends look after him.

"It's really challenging when you have a child with special needs, to really turn that responsibility over to someone else and feel like they are getting the best care," Price said. Price's husband Joel still works only part time, so he can drive his son to therapy sessions.

Financial support

Children with autism need to be immersed in their therapies in order to benefit, Price said. Providing therapy one day a week, when a child needs five sessions, won't have the same impact, Price said.

In 2010, Price and her husband started a non-profit organization called Imagine a Way to provide financial assistance to families with autistic children. The organization focuses trying to provide funds to support for children for two years.

While other nonprofits and government subsidies offer support to families of children with autism, it's often comes in the form of a little bit at a time, Price said.

"There's a recognized need for it, I just don't think there's a consolidated organization like Autism Speaks, that’s able to do something on a major scale," Price said. While any source of funding is valuable, "For the magnitude of what these kids need, a little bit is just not enough," Price said.

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By Rebecca Ruiz, msnbc.com

Drew and Skyler Russert are 16-year-old identical twin brothers from Los Altos, Calif. who share the same blue eyes, straight hair and love for football.

While recent research points to non-genetic causes of autism, 16-year-old identical twins Skyler, left, and Drew Russert aren't consumed by discovering the origins of their disorder.

Looking at them now, on the football field or in their high school classes, it would be hard to tell the boys were diagnosed with autism when they were nearly 4. Drew had a moderate form of the disorder, while Skyler’s case was severe.

Their parents, Peter Russert and Gaynelle Grover, were surprised by the diagnosis. The Russerts had no family history of autism, but they suspected a combination of environmental factors and genetics as a possible cause.

Was it local pollution or perhaps a viral infection during Gaynelle's second trimester? Was it their ages? Gaynelle was 40 and Peter was 44 when the boys were born.  

"There is this horrible emotional feeling, like this didn’t have to happen,” Gaynelle says.

While genes or genetic mutations were once thought to account for up to 90 percent of the risk for developing the brain disorder, recent research increasingly points to environmental triggers.

Previous research on twins found very high rates of autism among identical but not fraternal twins, indicating that the disorder was predominantly a genetic one.

However, a Stanford University study of 192 twins with autism -- including Drew and Skyler Russert -- found notably higher rates in fraternal twins, who do not share identical DNA. The research, which was published last summer in the Archives of General Psychiatry, suggests environmental factors -- such as parental age, low birth weight and maternal infections during pregnancy-- could account for 55 percent of a person’s susceptibility to autism.

Other recent studies have demonstrated an increased risk among mothers who don’t take prenatal vitamins, those who live within 1,000 feet of a freeway or who used a certain type of antidepressant in the first trimester.

A new study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics gave some clues as to how this might happen. In particular, genes linked to autism are more actively regulated during the transition from fetal to post-natal development, making them especially sensitive to environmental influence. This period of changes, during which genes can be turned on or off, might be critical for developmental brain disorders, according to the researchers.

Dr. Thomas Lehner, chief of genomics at the National Institute of Mental Health, says the Stanford study makes a compelling case that environment is an important factor. “[Genes] still play a role,” he says, but the “interplay between gene and environment could be very important to figure out.”

The Russerts embraced a combination of traditional and nutritional therapies in attempts to alleviate the boys’ symptoms and improve their language and communications skills. Like many parents of autistic children, the Russerts tried a complex combination of dietary changes, like gluten-free meals and enzyme and vitamin supplements to eliminate perceived environmental threats.

"It’s a little bizarre ... as a parent to turn into a scientist,” says Peter.

Alycia Halladay, director of research for environmental sciences for the New York-based advocacy organization Autism Speaks, says the best parents can do is have as healthy a pregnancy as possible and, if a child is diagnosed, consult a physician about any autism-related treatments. Even though the vaccine-autism theory has been debunked, Halladay says it remains a compelling explanation to some parents -- often to the exclusion of risks for which there is scientific evidence.

“There’s a huge group of people that when you say environmental factors, they limit that to vaccines,” says Halladay. “They don’t think about all of the other things that could play a role.”

Instead, Halladay says parents might focus more on minimizing stress and exposure to toxic chemicals, as both have linked to changes in the brain that might affect the way genes are turned on and off.

Autism Speaks, which helped to fund the Stanford study on twins, has backed efforts to identify environmental factors, such as nutrition and toxins, that could be linked to autism. The organization has also supported Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation, or EARLI, a study that is collecting environmental samples from the homes of parents with one autistic child and a newborn.

It will be years before EARLI is finished. Meanwhile, research continues to provide some clues to autism. A recent small study in the Archives of General Psychiatry linked environment to the regulation of certain genes susceptible to autism, although they did not identify specific environmental triggers.

The Russerts say Drew and Skyler aren’t consumed by discovering the origins of their autism. After years of speech and occupational therapy, the boys feel like they have overcome the disorder. They are both on track to attend college, and the communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors they experienced as toddlers are mostly gone.

Peter and Gaynelle are grateful for the outcome, but don’t claim to know exactly what helped the boys move beyond their original diagnosis.

“We’d all love that one little miracle puzzle piece,” says Gaynelle, but until the science is clear, “I don’t know we’ll have one answer for every kid.” 

Rebecca Ruiz is a senior editor at msnbc.com and a Rosaylnn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow

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Children with autism tend to also have other disorders, such as a learning disability or depression, which affect them in different ways as they age, a new study finds.

The findings may explain, in part, why children with autism often see a change in their diagnoses as they grow older, the study suggests.

The study was based on 1,366 children who had taken part in a national health survey who either were currently diagnosed with autism, or had been in the past but no longer had the diagnosis.

"Parents should have their child checked for other conditions to make sure an autism diagnosis is properly determined," said study researcher Li-Ching Lee, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"That way, a more appropriate intervention for the child can be planned as early as possible," Lee said.

The study is published today (Jan. 23) in the journal Pediatrics.

Making a proper diagnosis can often be difficult

Autistic spectrum disorders — including autism, Asperger's syndrome and other developmental disorders — affect a child's ability to communicate and interact with people.

About 1 in 110 children in the U.S. is currently diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Boys are four times more likely to have autism than girls.

Symptoms of co-existing medical conditions, such as learning disabilities, hearing and speech problems, depression and anxiety, have been shown to overlap with symptoms of autism, often making it difficult for doctors to make a proper diagnosis.

Previous studies have shown that children with autism have higher rates of co-existing conditions than normally developing children, and those with developmental delays who don't have autism.

How long an autism diagnosis lasts seem to vary over time. One study found that more than 10 percent of children diagnosed with autism at age 2 no longer had the disorder at age 9.

"We're not saying that a child who was diagnosed with autism at age 2 won’t have autism later in life," said lead author Heather Close, a researcher at the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"But there are other mechanisms at work that we don't know about that could take place," she said.

More than one diagnosis is likely

The new study included 2007 data from the National Survey of Children's Health. Parents were surveyed about their child's physical and mental health, current and past medical, behavioral and developmental diagnoses and health care needs.

Researchers looked at data for children in three age groups, including young children who were 3 to 5 years old, children who were 6 to 11 years old and teenagers who were 12 to 17 years old.

They found that young children with a current diagnosis of autism were 11 times more likely to have a learning disability, and nine times more likely to have another developmental delay, than young children diagnosed with autism in the past who no longer had a diagnosis.

Of those in the 6- to 11-year old group, children with a current diagnosis of autism were almost four times more likely to have a past speech problem and suffer from anxiety than those who no longer had a diagnosis.

And among teenagers, those with a current diagnosis of autism were almost four times more likely to have speech problems, and 10 times more likely to have epilepsy than those who no longer had a diagnosis.

"This study looks at a broader population of kids," than previous work, said Tristram Smith, a behavior specialist at the University of Rochester, who was not part of the study.

"It shows that developmental delay and seizures are what can increase the likelihood that autism will stay in someone who has a current diagnosis," Smith said.

Smith said he recommends that parents learn to understand that diagnoses can change, or there can be more than one.

"Parents are often looking for that one answer," he said. "Reality is, it's a moving target, and it's complicated. It can be more than one diagnosis at one time, or it can be different diagnoses at different times too."

Pass it on: Certain co-existing conditions could likely lead to a change in autism diagnosis.

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Florida Atlantic University

On their way to learning to talk, babies, like this one in a study at Florida Atlantic University, become good lip readers, new research shows. That discovery could help doctors detect autism earlier.

By Joan Raymond

For years, the conventional wisdom was that babies learned how to talk by listening to their parents. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that our little angels are using more than their ears to acquire language. They’re using their eyes, too, and are actually pretty good lip readers.

The finding could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention for autism spectrum disorders, estimated, on average, to affect 1 in 110 children in the United States alone.

In the study, researchers from Florida Atlantic University tested groups of infants, ranging from four to 12 months of age and a group of adults for comparison.

The babies watched videos of women speaking either in English, the native language used in the home, or in Spanish, a language foreign to them. Using an eye tracker device to study eye movements, the researchers looked at developmental changes in attention to the eyes and mouth.

Results showed that at four months of age, babies focused almost solely on the women’s eyes. But by six to eight months of age, when the infants entered the so-called “babbling” stage of language acquisition and reached a milestone of cognitive development in which they can direct their attention to things they find interesting, their focus shifted to the women’s mouths. They continue to “lip read” until about 10 months of age, a point when they finally begin mastering the basic features of their native language. At this point, infants also begin to shift their attention back to the eyes.

The researchers believe this second shift in attention is due to the emergence of speech, and their burgeoning ability to better understand “social cues  shared meanings, beliefs, and desires,” explains lead author David J. Lewkowicz, a professor of psychology.

In a second part of the study, the researchers looked at the role of early experience with a specific language and how it relates to lip reading in infancy.

Videos of a Spanish speaking woman were shown to English-learning babies between 4 and 12 months of age. The researchers found these infants also shifted their attention to the mouth by 8 months of age, but they continued to lip read as late as 12 months of age, unlike the babies who were exposed to the English video.

“These babies were experts at English, and now when they heard Spanish, it was like ‘Ok, this is weird, I better start looking at the mouth again, instead of the eyes, so I can figure out what’s going on.'”

The study data suggest that infants who continue to focus most of their attention on the mouth past 12 months of age, “... are probably not developing age-appropriate perceptual and cognitive skills and may be at risk for disorders like autism,” Lewkowicz says.

Although more research is needed, the finding may be able to provide about six months of earlier intervention for autism, which currently can be diagnosed with behavioral testing beginning at about 18 months of age. “The earlier we can diagnose it (autism), the more effectively we can ensure the best possible developmental outcomes,” says Lewkowicz.

Courtesy of the University of Missouri

Images like this helped researchers determine differences in the faces of children with autism, when compared to those without the developmental disorder.

We may be a step closer in understanding what causes autism, say University of Missouri researchers after finding differences between the facial characteristics of children who have autism and those who don’t.

Kristina Aldridge, lead author and assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Missouri, began looking at facial characteristics of autistic children after another researcher, Judith Miles, professor emerita in the School of Medicine and the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, mentioned, “There is just something about their faces. They are beautiful, but there is just something about them.”

“Children with other disorders such as Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome have very distinct facial features. Autism is much less striking,” she says. “You can’t pick them out in a crowd of kids, but you can pick them out mathematically.”

When researchers took three-dimensional images of the children, they discovered autistic children have a broader upper face with wider eyes, a shorter middle region of the face including the cheeks and nose and a broader or wider mouth and philtrum -- the area below the nose and above the top lip.

Aldridge analyzed 64 boys with autism and 41 typically developing boys ages 8 to 12 using the 3-D images of each boys’ head. She also mapped out 17 points on the face, such as the corner of the eye and the divot in the upper lip. When the overall geometry of the face was calculated and the two groups were compared, she noticed statistical differences in autistic children’s faces.

Researchers also noticed even more differences in a smaller group of autistic children.

“They showed differences in clinical and behavioral traits as well,” she says. “That would tell us about multiple causes of autism.”

Aldridge says the images provide a clue to what happens in the embryo during the middle of the first trimester of pregnancy when the face begins to develop. It may help researchers understand if something environmentally or genetically is happening in the uterus during pregnancy that causes autism.

“This is clear support that the cause of autism is likely happening before birth,” Aldridge says. “This allows us to start looking at those hypotheses more directly.

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