What’s so unusual about a baby fascinated with spinning a cup, or a toddler flapping his hands, or a preschooler walking on her toes?

Parents and even doctors sometimes miss these red flags for autism, but a new online video “glossary” makes them startlingly clear.

A new Web site offers dozens of video clips of autistic kids contrasted with unaffected children’s behavior. Some of the side-by-side differences can make you gasp. Others are more subtle.

The free site, debuting Monday, also defines and depicts “stimming,” “echolalia” and other confusing-sounding terms that describe autistic behavior. Stimming refers to repetitive, self-stimulating or soothing behavior including hand-flapping and rocking that autistic children sometimes do in reaction to light, sounds or excitement. Echolalia is echoing or repeating someone else’s words or phrases, sometimes out of context.

The new site is sponsored by two nonprofit advocacy groups: Autism Speaks and First Signs. They hope the site will promote early diagnosis and treatment, which can help young children with autism lead more normal lives.

Pediatrician Dr. Michael Wasserman cautioned that the site might lead some parents to needlessly fret about normal behavior variations, and said they shouldn’t use it to try to diagnose their own kids.

“Just as there’s a spectrum in autism… there’s a spectrum in normal development,” said Wasserman, with Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. “Children don’t necessarily develop in a straight line.”

But Amy Wetherby, a Florida State University professor of communications disorders who helped create the site, noted that sometimes “parents are the first to be concerned and the doctors aren’t necessarily worried. This will help give them terms to take to the doctor and say, ‘I’m worried about it.”

And while the children shown in the “Red Flags” video clips on the site have been diagnosed with some form of autism, the sponsors note that not all children who behave this way have something wrong. In fact, the behaviors in some of the short video clips — when viewed individually — look fairly normal.

The important thing is to seek medical help if a child does exhibit persistent unusual behavior, to either rule out autism or get an early diagnosis, said Alison Singer of Autism Speaks.

Added Wetherby, “We now know that one out of 150 children has autism, or one out of 94 boys. It’s not a rare disability. We also know that early intervention is critical.”

The site was to be available to the public starting Monday on the Autism Speaks Web site http://www.autismspeaks.org…

Source: The Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5htXHW6x_bZpv3TYm_5kUlu5xNoNwD8S9F17G0

Children as young as 14 months of age can be reliably diagnosed with autism, according to an Adelaide psychologist who has devised a tool to help experts detect the telltale signs of the lifelong disability.

Robyn Young, head of the Early Intervention Research Program at Flinders University, said the assessment tool could even be used to identify risk in children as young as 12 months.

Until now, there have not been widely available systems for accurately assessing autism because there are no biological markers or tests. People with the disorder have impaired social interaction, communication and imagination, and often engage in repetitive patterns of behaviour.

Associate Professor Young’s system - called Autism Detection in Early Childhood - is the first method to assess 16 behaviours linked to the core brain deficits driving autism…

According to Professor Young’s colleague, psychologist Carrie Partington, very young children with autism spectrum disorders frequently displayed three types of behaviours: they didn’t recognise their name, they didn’t imitate adult facial expressions and they didn’t switch their gaze.

“Most kids will look around the room to share their experience of, say, a new toy,” she said. The inability to do that, “gaze switching”, is a predictor of ASD…

Source: The Australian, Australia
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22527952-23289,00.html

As federal health officials offer more evidence that the mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal is safe, many vaccine experts say in retrospect that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to remove it from childhood vaccines may have done more harm than good by raising public fears.

And still others argue that research and funds still being spent on exploring the risks of thimerosal could be directed to more productive enterprises.

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that early exposure to thimerosal does not cause any neurological problems. Thimerosal, used in vaccines since the 1930s, has been a topic of controversy since the FDA banned it in 1999.

Some claim that the additive causes autism and other brain development disorders in children. But the latest study joins a growing body of literature that shows thimerosal is safe and causes no long-term negative effects on children’s health.

Although no concrete evidence at the time showed that thimerosal was harmful, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics pushed for its elimination to quell the fears of parents who might otherwise not get their children vaccinated.

But in an editorial published alongside this new research, Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, argues that this move was likely unnecessary — and it could have ended up causing even more alarm among parents…

“Thimerosal was removed from vaccines as a preventive measure, even though there was no indication that it represented a health risk,” Mark Slifka of the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute and the Oregon Health and Sciences University says…

Source: ABC News
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/Germs/story?id=3655803&page=1

High levels of a male sex hormone in foetuses are linked to a higher chance of developing autistic traits in childhood, scientists say.

The research team, from the University of Cambridge, looked at levels of foetal testosterone in the womb by examining samples taken from women undergoing amniocentesis for clinical reasons…

But the scientists’ latest research results came from a study undertaken when the children were eight years old…

Extreme male brain

Professor Simon Baren-Cohen, who was also involved in the study, said: “This is the first time autistic traits have been linked to levels of foetal testosterone, measured in the womb using amniocenteses.”

Animal research has previously linked brain development to foetal testosterone levels, and some believe the hormone may play a causal role in autism.

However, the scientists stressed that the study only showed a link between autistic traits and the hormone, rather than a direct link to autism itself.

Dr Auyeng said: “We’re still in the early stages of figuring out what actual role foetal testosterone plays. We don’t know if it is causing autistic traits, if it is a by-product of them, or an indication of various interactions…

Scientists currently do not know what causes elevated levels of foetal testosterone. Professor Baron-Cohen said previous research suggested that it could be a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.

He said that the hormone could be affecting the brain through altering neural cell connectivity and chemicals that carry messages, known as neurotransmitters…

The work is connected to Professor Baron-Cohen’s hypothesis suggesting that autism is a version of the extreme male brain.

He said that although researchers had tested this theory at the psychological level, the new studies meant it could now be tested at the biological level.

Source: BBC News, UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6989247.stm

A Harvard pediatrician replies to parents worried about day care, autism and vaccines.

I recently put my kids in day care and they have had constant cold symptoms and mild diarrhea. I realize day care is an adjustment and exposes them to all sorts of new bacteria and viruses, but it’s been more than a month and I am having symptoms as well. How long should this be expected to last?

Dr. Claire McCarthy: There are all sorts of studies to show that children who attend day care get sick more often than those who don’t. The number of illnesses each year varies a lot from child to child, from about three times a year to as much as six or seven —which could feel like almost constant illness to a parent, especially if the parent is catching the illnesses, too!

As much as this may make you want to pull your kids out of day care, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It turns out that getting exposed to plenty of bacteria and viruses when you are young may be a really good thing—because it helps promote the healthy development of the immune system. In fact, research has shown that early exposure to germs can decrease a child’s risk of getting asthma and other allergic diseases. It may even decrease their risk of certain cancers such as Hodgkin’s disease…

With all the publicity about autism and immunizations, I’ve chosen not to immunize my kids. What are your thoughts?

There is a lot of publicity about autism and immunizations. What there isn’t a lot of, though, is scientific data to link them. Children get lots of immunizations in the first two years of life—and that’s when the signs of autism emerge. So it’s entirely possible, if not probable, that families or doctors will begin to notice autistic behaviors within a month or two of a child’s getting a vaccine—but that doesn’t mean the vaccine caused the autism…

Source: Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20643575/site/newsweek/

Young Chinese families are trying to give their kids an early start in the ultra-competitive process of education: By starting lessons in the womb.

Pregnant women are talking to their unborn babies, and even playing Mozart music, to their bellies in an effort to help their child get a headstart on education and an edge in intelligence.

According to heath experts, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practice, taijiao, has re-emerged as a trendy way for the new generation of urban mothers.

Taijiao, or fetal education, is designed to boost the mood of mothers-to-be in a bid to ensure a smooth pregnancy and a healthy, intelligent child…

According to M.K. Chin, a nurse-midwife who has delivered more than 3,000 babies, she has seen more expectant mothers take up taijiao in the past five years and says its is beneficial.

However she says no amount of taijiao is as effective as mother-child bonding after birth and says breastfeeding is a far more positive choice for a child’s intelligence than taijiao.

Source: People’s Daily Online, China
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/6245116.html

Alternative treatments for autism - some of them potentially deadly - are growing more pervasive and run the gamut from dietary supplements to prescribing a potentially dangerous diabetes drug, which now carries the government’s most stringent warning.

“What this all boils down to is that people are very motivated to help their children. They’re desperate and there are people out there who are preying on their desperation,” said James Mulick, a professor of pediatrics and psychology at Ohio State University. Autism is an incurable neurodevelopmental disorder usually diagnosed in early childhood and marked by language and communication deficits and withdrawal from social contact.

Mulick cited diets, such as those in which the wheat protein gluten is eliminated, to the use of vitamin supplements as some of the harmless but he believes ineffective treatments sought by parents of autistic children.

Chelation therapy, Mulick said, is a potentially dangerous process that uses a compound that is supposed to remove heavy metals from children’s tissues. Many parents believe mercury contained in routine vaccines is the cause of autism. A 5-year-old Pittsburgh boy with autism died in 2005 after undergoing chelation therapy, according to news accounts…

Source: Newsday, NY
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsauti215340114aug21,0,7750405.story

A rogue protein, interleukin 6 - produced when a pregnant woman is fighting a viral infection - may help trigger mental illnesses such as autism and schizophrenia in the child, US neuroscientist Paul Patterson said yesterday.

Professor Patterson, speaking from an international neuroscience conference in Melbourne, said schizophrenia and autism resulted from a combination of environmental factors such as the mother’s health and genetic predisposition.

Professor Patterson, from the California Institute of Technology, said that when a pregnant woman contracted respiratory infections such as influenza during pregnancy, there was a greater risk the fetus’s brain would be permanently altered, leaving it prone to the possibility of mental illness later in life…

“Pregnant women shouldn’t feel that their child will definitely wind up with schizophrenia because they have been sick, but Brown’s work shows they should definitely try to take as many precautions against getting sick as they can,” he said.

“Catching the flu when you’re pregnant is not a good thing, and does increase the risk of adverse consequences for the fetus.” …

Source: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22080530-601,00.html

Newborns sleep about 16 hours a day. When infants reach a year, they stand on their own, or at least wobble. At age 4, many children can tell stories — and in the decade that follows, motor skills become bike rides; memory skills become math solutions; language skills turn into back talk — as the brain prunes its billions of nerve cells and refines its trillions of connections.

And once they’re 18, they may again sleep 16 hours a day.

This path into adulthood is well worn, but developmental scientists know very little about the mental changes that guide the way — limiting their ability to identify and understand many disorders that crop up en route.

Soon, however, a group of researchers will complete a major study of normal brain growth — the first of its kind — that will fill in this map of child development.

The National Institutes of Health Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Normal Brain Development, an encyclopedic and unprecedented project, will track the growth and structural changes of healthy children’s brains as they develop from birth to late adolescence — providing developmental researchers and pediatricians with a benchmark, finally, of what is “normal.” …

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://tinyurl.com/3b3299

Hundreds of autistic children in Scotland could be undiagnosed as a study reveals more youngsters than previously thought could be affected.

Academics, researching the life-long condition which affects ability to socialise, believe as many as one in 58 children could have autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The figure demonstrates a huge increase. A study published last year in medical journal, the Lancet, suggested one in every hundred is affected. Pre-1990 research estimated just four or five cases per 10,000 people…

John McDonald, the chief executive of the Scottish Society for Autism, said: “There are a significant number of children going undiagnosed.” …

“Pupils whose behaviour had been previously attributed to something else are being identified as autistic because diagnostic techniques are improving and diagnosticians are better equipped now to understand in more detail what exactly we are seeing.” …

Source: The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=1066522007