Autism is associated with specific brain cell abnormalities

U.S. researchers found that in the brains of children and young people with autism, several specific types of nerve cell gene expression abnormalities affect neuron growth and communication with each other, and that the extent of some gene expression abnormalities is associated with the severity of the condition.
the University of California, San Francisco, said in a press release that the university's researchers' findings provide a new direction for developing a universal treatment for autism. The paper was published in the American journal Science.
previous studies have found that abnormal genetic activity during the fetal period interferes with the normal development of the cerebral cortical layer and is a common cause of autism. But little is known about how these abnormalities manifest them in the brains of patients after birth or even into adults.
team used brain tissue samples from 15 patients who died. The patients died between the ages of 4 and 22. The researchers sequenced the expression of genes from individual brain cells in the deceased patient using single-core RNA (RNA) sequencing, and then compared them with 16 normal brain deaths.
results showed that a group of excitable neurons in the upper layers of the cerebral cortical layer in the dead patients had a group of genes that were significantly abnormal in expression, affecting communication between synapses, and that small glial cells responsible for cleaning and maintaining and ensuring the normal growth of neurons also had abnormalities. In addition, the degree to which a particular set of genes in the cortological-cortogenic projection neurons expresses abnormalities is related to the severity of the disease.
because of the number of genes involved in autism and the wide range of specific symptoms, the medical community had previously feared that there might be no uniform therapy for autism and that it needed to be tailored to each patient. The new findings mean that brain abnormalities in many patients are common, created new hope and direction for the development of universal therapies. (Source: Xinhua News Agency)
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