Chitchat New Technology Can Cure Lee Hsien Loong Mentally Disorder Autism Son Li Yi P

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Autism is detectable in brain scans long before symptoms appear, new study says

Researchers at the University of North Carolina used brain scans to predict with 80% accuracy whether certain children would develop autism, meaning such scans could enable early treatment of the disorder long before symptoms are evident.

Until recently, the average age of diagnosis for autism was about four years, NBC News reported, but the new research suggests autism may be detectable within a child's first year. And that's important, said Dr. Joseph Piven, who lead authored a resulting study.

"If we can target interventions before autism appears and before the brain changes appear, during a time when the brain is highly malleable or plastic, we can have a bigger impact on the outcome," Piven, who directs the university's Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, told NBC News.

Autism affects about 1 in 100 people in the general population, according to the journal Nature, which published the small study. But Infants with an older sibling who has autism have about a 1 in 5 chance of developing autism spectrum disorder.

The study involved MRI scans on 106 infants with older siblings who had autism and 42 infants whose families had no history of the disorder, Nature reported. The scans, taken at six months, one year and two years, revealed that children later diagnosed with autism showed key brain growth during their first year, the university said.

Those growth differences allowed researchers to predict which infants who had a sibling with autism would themselves receive a diagnosis at age two.

Piven said much more research is needed before doctors could use MRI scans to clinically test for autism, according to NBC News, but the study represents a significant step in early autism detection.


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