Is AS more common in boys, girls or neither?

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This has been really informative, thanks guys! I had always wondered this, and it almost makes you think that we should have TWO methods of diagnosis and requirements for each gender! But I wouldn't want that as it would just make things more confusing than they are already! This has helped out with the forming of my story, and whether a character should be a girl or a guy. Once again, thanks, but keep posting your ideas and theories!

more men have autism than women due to genetics... this goes the same for any other sex-linked heritable condition.

the reason for this has to do with sex chromosomes. women have 2 X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y chromosome. soemthing like 99% of your sex-specific genetic information is found on your X chromosome(s)... sorry guys, that Y chromosome really is only there to attatch your penis ...

so, if a women has a bad copy of a gene on one of her X chromosomes, her other X chromosome can take over for the expression of that gene (because the other X chromosome contains another copy of the same genes) and that woman will still have a normally functioning gene.

if a man has a bad copy of a gene on his X chromosome, he's kinda out of luck becuase he doesn't have another X chromosome to take over the expression for that gene and pick up the slack. so in this case, the bad copy of the gene gets expressed.

Edit: sorry guys... caught myself in a nerdy faux pas. This whole thing should say that because there is a sckew in numbers of males vs females with autism and many other heritable conditions... they suspect at least one of the genes involved are on the X chromosome... which gives you the skew of percent of sexes affected by these types of conditions~ for the above stated reasons.

Last edited by Sedaka on 14 Oct 2006, 5:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It's a good thing I listened in Science when we were doing genetics, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten a word of that!

I think appearances are deceiving in more ways than one. That is, Asperger's fundamentally effects the sexes differently. Remember, it's called the autistic spectrum, and Asperger's could conceivably be a whole section of it. A guy who just happened to get the other X chromosome in a different universe could very well be, by all accounts, an NT out of the box in that latter universe.

Alternatively, having an extra set of testosterone-producing glands down there could put someone at greater risk of spontaneously developing the disorder, if we are to indulge the "hyper-masculine" theory (as well as humor me.)

Yet at the same time, I think it works the opposite way round for the social interaction aspect of the spectrum. I think there's a far greater expectation for women to be sociable and want to chat and gossip, and if a female has difficulty in doing that or simply doesn't want to, she becomes a pariah - whereas I think it would be more acceptable for a man and people would be more inclined to just say he was quiet/very work-orientated, etc.

Don't quit yet, Sedaka, That was interesting stuff. I realize you were being rhetorical in referring to the genetic basis of aspergers as a "bad copy" of a gene, but there is more to that besides all the usual "Yay for us."

Aspies are well above average in our ability to learn about subjects that interest us. It seems to me that the genetic basis for asperger's switches off a complex of genes that normally produce an intuitive comprehension of nonverbal communication while it switches on a complex of genes that produce curiosity.

Gender is determined by the genome of the sperm cell. Every human egg cell contains a copy of one of the mother's X chromosomes. The sperm cell contains either a copy of the father's X or Y chromosome. A male cannot inherit an X chromosome from his father.

If it is true that the genetic trigger for asperger's is located on the X chromosome, this would mean that asperger's would, as you stated, be much more common among males, but it would also mean that there would be absolutely no inheritance of asperger's from fathers to sons.

I think it is frequently underdiagnosed in females, who have a different language structure within their brain organization. As more research is done this may improve. Sort of the way medicine didn't belive women had as many heart attacks as men until it was demonstrated that their symptoms were significantly different.

I also agree that one of the reasons it is under diagnosed in females may be that females are indeed less disruptive in a classroom, but I've no empirical evidance to support that theory.