Heritability of Autism - Proposed Models

Proposed Models

Twin and family studies show that autism is a highly heritable condition, but they have left many questions for researchers, most notably

  • Why is fraternal twin concordance so low considering that identical twin concordance is high?
  • Why are parents of autistic children typically non-autistic?
  • Which factors could be involved in the failure to find a 100% concordance in identical twins?
  • Is profound mental retardation a characteristic of the genotype or something totally independent?

Some researchers have speculated that what we currently refer to as "autism" may be a catch-all description for many yet unknown conditions with different genetic and/or environmental etiologies. This would appear to make the effort to find a genotype model a lot more difficult, and perhaps even pointless. Nevertheless, a number of genetic models have been proposed to try to explain the results of twin and sibling studies.

Read more about this topic:  Heritability Of Autism

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