Researchers have found that male rhesus monkeys who tend to shun group play, mutual grooming and other social activities have a subtle thing in common with boys who have an autism spectrum disorder. In both cases, they have unusually low levels of a hormone called vasopressin.

Outside the brain, vasopressin helps regulate blood pressure and fluid retention. But in the brain, it has long been thought to play a role in social, sexual and nurturing behavior. And because it interacts with male hormones such as testosterone, some scientists suspect it could be implicated in autism, which affects boys at about four times the rate that it does girls.

So researchers from Stanford University, UC San Francisco and UC Davis decided to explore whether vasopressin levels might be a biological marker for autism. In both humans and rhesus monkeys, they found, levels of the hormone in cerebrospinal fluid — generally a clue to its concentration in the brain — were markedly higher in individuals without social deficits than they were in the least social members of both groups.

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10 Aspergers Symptoms – Autism and Asperger Syndrome Symptoms

This video shows the top 10 Aspergers Symptoms for people looking for a diagnosis on Asperger’s Syndrome or Autism

Mutations in a gene called ADNP result in a distinct syndrome that includes autism, intellectual disability and problems with the gut, eyes, heart and brain, according to a new study1.

The results flesh out the clinical characteristics of one of the more common autism syndromes.

The researchers characterized the effects of mutations in this gene in 78 people. These individuals also have behavioral problems, distinctive facial features and low muscle tone.

“This is one of the first rare-disease studies that extensively describes a cohort of sufficient size,” says lead researcher Frank Kooy, professor of cognitive genetics at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. “We originally identified this as an autism gene, but if you look at the patients, there are actually so many more comorbidities.”

ADNP has many functions, including in the growth of neurons. It first turned up on a list of possible autism genes in 2012. Two years later, Kooy and others reported that 10 people with autism, identified through DNA repositories, carry mutations in the gene.

“Given that the syndrome was discovered and reported only in 2014, [the new work] represents an important step forward in understanding the clinical complexity of the syndrome,” says Silvia De Rubeis, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who was not involved in the study.

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Disgust expressed at incident at BFI screening of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in London

Staff at the British Film Institute have been accused of forcibly removing a woman with Asperger’s from the cinema in what onlookers described as a “disgusting” sign of “naked intolerance”.

The 25-year-old woman was watching a screening at the BFI’s cinema on London’s South Bank of her favourite film – the spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly directed by Sergio Leone – with her sister. Witnesses claim she was asked to leave for laughing too loudly.

One cinema-goer, Lloyd Shepherd, expressed his disgust after the incident. He claimed: “She’d been laughing very loudly but at moments which were supposed to be funny. Some people complained. She was dragged out shouting: ‘I’m sorry, I have Asperger’s.’ She was incredibly upset.”

He added that some people applauded the woman being removed while others were upset, with a large number leaving.

Wtf. Have just witnessed a woman with Aspergers being forcibly removed from a @BFI screening. Why? Because someone complained about her laughing. I feel sick to my stomach #bfi

— Amie-Jo (@amiejolocke) April 29, 2018

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