I wonder how the genetic markers he's talking about relate to the four subtypes of autism that were identified by AI as discussed in the other thread making its rounds? Some of the genetic risk factors seem to correlate with the specific traits that were described but they seem individual effects rather than clusters. Like was said, just having one of those factors does not make you very likely to actually be diagnosable.
My specific takeaways.
There are a large body of genes that circulate in the population that could make you more likely to exhibit autism traits. Many people carry them but it's when they're concentrated due to your specific parental combinations and random genomic selection, they can have a more profound effect. However even that effect is still somewhat minor.
One or both of your parents can then have mutations they carry, but that doesn't make them diagnosable. This might combine with a parent that has a concentration of population genetic traits. This has a higher likelihood of producing diagnosable autism.
The strongest factors are De-novo mutations that happen only in that child's genome. If you have one or more of these, you have the strongest chance of developing autism traits but these are often accompanied by the genetic mutations acquired by parents and those concentrated in the population.
Individual genes are associated with specific cognitive, social and repetitive traits. That was interesting.
Repetitive behaviors are most strongly linked with educational attainment. A result that's somewhat surprising but kind of makes sense if you think of repetitive behaviors being related to retaining ideas.
Lifelong education potential is also strongly correlated with all these genes, so if you have just enough of them, you do really well in school. If you have far too many, you might drop further into social deficits and other traits. Basically, some levels of these genes are beneficial, but it can go too far.
Educational attainment is most often linked with older mothers. This is explained by the mothers that carry these genes often are educated and therefore put off having children later in life, rather than any specific increase in mutations.
There's a link between autism, social impairment and young parents, because the young parents have some level of social impairment.
There's a link between older fathers and autism, in this case it's not directly said but more likely the older father is developing more mutations.
Girls are often only diagnosed when the carry a higher genetic load biasing them to autism compared to boys. So there is a protective effect there, but it also points to a larger body of undiagnosed women with less genetic loading. There was another thread where this was discussed and it's explained here a bit but it's really just something there's not enough good information on.
If you were to test a child for autism using these traits, and screened them out, you'd be screening out the children that have the highest education potential.
23 Apr 2023, 1:56 pm
