April Is Autism Awareness Month In Portland
Portland Care Professionals Still Don’t Know What Causes Autism
April is Autism Awareness Month, a time when families and communities gather to increase awareness and acceptance of autism spectrum disorder. Since the disorder was first described in 1943, scientists (and pseudoscientists) have proposed a litany of factors that might give rise to the range of communication and interaction disorders that we now call ASD. Vaccines. Power lines. Bad parenting. All have been soundly rejected. That means that even on Autism Awareness Day in 2019, a basic understanding of what causes autism remains elusive.So what exactly causes autism—and what definitely does not?
What We’re Sure Does Not Cause Autism
Shortly after Leo Kanner first described children with “extreme autistic aloneness” in 1943, researchers rushed to blame bad parenting for the disorder. Kanner himself led the charge, with his suspicion that “genuine lack of maternal warmth” gave rise to children who struggled to interact normally with others.
This guilt trip was all but established science throughout the 1950s.Then, in 1964, Bernard Rimland published Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, a book that shifted the blame from parenting style to neurological development. As studies began to build around the theory that biological brain development, not parenting, was responsible for these disorders, the theory that parental coldness caused autism was slowly debunked. Experts now agree that parenting strategy does not cause autism. Indeed, if parental coldness caused autism, one would expect “cold” parents to have more autistic children than anyone else. Studies have confirmed that they do not. But biology and brain development are unsatisfying explanations.
Meanwhile, roughly 20 genes have been linked to autism and almost all of them play a role in brain development and communication between brain cells. One of the most likely targets for future genetics research is chromosome 17. Children with a particular mutation on that chromosome have been shown to be 14 times more likely to develop autism than other kids.
Perhaps it is one, or many, of these genes and genetic mutations that alter the developing brain and kick off ASD. Imaging studies have shown that children with autism show marked, physical differences in the cerebral cortex and cerebellum (which controls, among other things, concentration, and mood). The current thinking is that spontaneous genetic mutations rewire how brain cells communicate with one another in the early stages of development and growth of the brain. The ultimate consequences are the brain changes that are observed in people affected by autism.
So what causes these mutations in the first place? Scientists are not sure. One dominant theory is that parental age contributes to the risk of mutations across the board. Older parents have older sperm and egg cells, which may be more susceptible to de novo mutations — changes in DNA sequences that occur in each cell as a fertilized egg divides. Recent studies suggest that people with ASD have more de novo mutations than the general public. Mothers over the age of 40 are up to 50 percent more likely to have children with an autism spectrum disorder. But there are likely other factors, perhaps even environmental factors that contribute to the mutations that are thought to give rise to the brain changes that ultimately cause autism.
Despite little knowledge of the current cause, learning about autism is still the main goal at BrightStar Care, therefore we recommend that individual care teams help the movement and spread the word of its existence to help generate more care plans that may in the future help bring more information to the disorder.
Source: https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/autism-awareness
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Source: https://www.brightstarcare.com/west-portland