Twin Study: The Roles of Genetics and Environment in Autism
Stanford’s California Autism Twins Study – the largest autism twin study ever – suggests that environmental influences during pregnancy may significantly increase the risk for autism. Genes are known to contribute to the risk for autism; the twins study provides strong evidence that a shared prenatal environment may play a greater role than previously suspected in the development of autism. Different-age siblings typically have a 3 to 14% chance of both having autism, while this study reported that fraternal twins (who share no more of their genes than different-age siblings) both had autism in 35% of the cases. This evidence suggests that the environment shared by twins, in this case the womb, could be significantly contributing to the risk for autism. Click on the following link for more information about this study: http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/archgenpsychiatry.2011.76v1?rss=1
