Autism and DNA

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Hi, everybody. I was diagnosed with Asperger's in 2010. I've also been very interested in my family history for years. After I was diagnosed, part of my research involved talking with some of my relatives about the past behavior of my father (1916-1997) who, I realize retrospectively, also had AS, and his mother, my Grandma (1892-1966), whom I knew and whose past behavior showed many signs of AS.

Grandma was of Dutch and French Canadian descent. Her husband, my Grandpa, was of Irish descent. He died when I was three, so I never really knew him, but I learned something about him by talking with his daughter, my aunt Rita (1919-2018). She said he tended to keep to himself, reading his newspaper every night and paying no attention to his children. He and Grandma never entertained, and never invited anyone to their home. It wasn't much to go on, but it was enough to make me consider that my family's AS came from them. I also have a brother who has shown symptoms, as have his eldest son and his eldest granddaughter.

Then last year I took the Ancestry DNA test, and to my surprise, it said I was 89% Irish and 11% English, Scotch and Welsh. I have no Dutch or French Canadian DNA. I always thought my AS came mainly from my grandmother. But I do realize that this DNA test is specifically targeted to people's nationalities and not to their neurology.

Does anybody know if there's an autism-related DNA test? Please advise. Thank you.

Sincerely,

higgie

Although autism is described as the most heritable mental condition, it's not simple to test for. It's complicated because autism is akin to a syndrome with many possible genetic factors. Some can be outright genetic differences but others are related to copy number variations of particular genes. Autism Speaks lobbied for a long time for genetic testing for autism, but there's an ethical question because it could result in the termination of autistics before birth, meaning in the future there would be no autistics born. There's some new DNA testing technology that can detect autism more efficiently than in the past, but it's still a low percentage of the total:
https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news ... er-tests#1

Current autism genetic tests are nonsense because they do not detect autism but different forms of syndromic autism, like Fragile X syndrome, that are not true autism.

There will be no real genetic testing of autism in the market until the true cause of autism is revealed.

Yes I totally agree with @EyeDash autism is the most heritable mental condition

You can take your AncestryDNA to a site called Promethease and it will tell you all the different medical and psychological traits you are at risk for. I believe a number of the genes it reports are related to autism. For me, a more pertinent result is all the risk factors I have for cardiovascular disease and obesity. I'm 64, so I'm in the age range where many of my ancestors croaked.

A couple of findings I've read in the lay press are these. First, families that have members with autism also have a higher rate of other mental disorders such as major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Second, and this surprised me, apparently the Irish population has a higher rate of schizophrenia than other ethnic groups.

As for your observation about autism in your ancestry, I also have found quite a few people in my family have at last BAP (broader autism phenotype) if not outright autism spectrum disorder.

There’s a lot of autism in my family and we’re mostly English, Scottish, and Irish and have a fair amount of German as well.

I find this sort of stuff really interesting.

I did some genetic testing on my son a few months ago. On that specific test, I don’t think that it mentioned the likelihood of autism. The likelihood of developing OCD was really high, though. My brother and I have some OCD traits but some of those behaviors could be attributed to being on the spectrum.

A DNA test for autism simply won't be very efficient. There are at least 65 genes that are "strongly" correlated with autism, and 200+ that are weakly correlated. With so many genes showing a correlation, it's highly probable that pretty much everyone alive has one or more genes, even if they're NT.

Correlation, though, doesn't imply causation. I remember an example in 1st year stats where people's lifespan worldwide is correlated with the number of TV's they own, but watching TV doesn't increase lifespan... not so far as I know.

I do not know whether the severity of the ASD you end up with depends on the number of strongly/weekly correlated genes you inherited. Even the strongly correlated genes may only be activated under certain environmental conditions, or might require another gene to be inherited along with them (which, when inherited by itself, has no correlation with ASD whatsoever) in order to do anything. I haven't studied genetics much, but from the bit I studied at university, it's complex .

A good thing about that Promethease site I mentioned earlier is that it tells you how strong the effect is, as well as how good the research studies that found each effect were. These two things allow you, as a layperson, to sort of evaluate how much weight you want to give each finding.

But yes, this stuff is very complex.

I just got my ASD dx yesterday and submitted my 23&me data to Promethease. Turns out I do have a slight risk and active genes for autism, even more than bipolar, and I have bipolar 1.

Interesting topic. I also have my 23&me results and will need to test this Promethease!

This was my ancestry composition
European 100%

Scandinavian
79.3%
Click to see a more detailed report of this population
Dalarna County, Sweden
Hedmark, Norway
+18 regions

British & Irish
6.0%

French & German
4.6%

Finnish
2.3%

Broadly Northwestern European
6.8%

Eastern European
0.3%

Broadly European
0.7%


My health report was super nice to read. Power athlete genes Also a lot of neanderthal genes.

What I think is weird is that they never found anything pointing to autism genes when the autism center did a "general DNA scan", yet there are several cases in our family tree with autism. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what Promethease will add.

uhm congrats on getting the testing done !

Thanks, and I have lots of risk for SZ also.
Yes, it's super cheap for what it does!

Fortunately, ^this^ individual has not even logged in for over a year.

I would think high heritability would involve a condition that is "nature and nurture" because heritability is inclusive of both.