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First Autism Prevention Study Launched by University of Washington |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Autism researchers at the University of Washington will take the initial step in attempting to prevent the developmental disorder when they launch an $11.3 million study this week. While the latest research shows that autism affects as many as one in every 150 newborns in the United States, about one of every 20 infants who have an older sibling with autism will develop the disorder. "This is the first trial to attempt to intervene and treat infants who are at risk for autism at the earliest time that symptoms are present," said Annette Estes, associate director of the UW Autism Center and research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavior science, who will head clinical assessment component of the new study. One of our goals is to be able to identify autism as early as possible before obvious symptoms show up so we can intervene while the connections in a child's brain are still plastic. We will be looking at genetics, neurobiology and a number of early behavioral measures to predict which children will develop autism," she said. The other infants and their mothers will participate in an intervention at the UW Autism Center that promotes first relationships. Mothers will be trained to engage their infants in eye contact and each mother and child will be videotaped interacting once a week for nine weeks. The research is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development, which recently named the UW Autism Center one of six new Autism Centers of Excellence.
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