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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the okay to an app designed to help clinicians diagnose autism in children, labeling it safe for use. But it's still unclear whether the technology is effective, researchers say, raising concerns that it could actually disrupt the standard diagnosis process and, in some cases, lead to delays in starting therapy."I think what they've done looks beautiful and is an example of what money can buy," says Catherine Lord, distinguished professor of psychiatry and education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-creator of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, considered the 'gold standard' for diagnosing autism. "But it may cause more harm than help."The app, which is targeted at primary care physicians and pediatricians, was created by Cognoa, a California-based company founded by autism researcher Dennis Wall. It is part of a machinelearning-based system called Canvas Dx that uses algorithms to evaluate videos and other information about a child, uploaded by their parents and doctor. The company aims to release the app and the rest of the Canvas Dx system in the United States by the end of 2021, says Sharief https://www.spectrumnews.org

The U.S. government today announced the latest iteration of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), the body of scientists and advocates that helps set priorities for federally funded autism research and services.

On 11 January 2023, as the workday began, Thomas Frazier experienced academic whiplash. First, the editors at Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology let him know that they had published his paper on a new autism trait measure. Then, an hour later, a colleague alerted him that the Daily Mail had covered it, with a splashy headline boasting the tool's ability to "diagnose autism with up to 95 percent accuracy." "I freaked out," says Frazier, professor of psychology at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio. According to Frazier, the data behind the new measure, the Autism Symptom Dimensions Questionnaire (ASDQ), are far too preliminary to justify its clinical use absent the addition of other validated measures.

Most cells repair damaged DNA throughout the lifespan while they replicate and divide. But neurons -which stop dividing once they reach maturity and can collect damage every time they send or receive a signal -don't have that ability.To help combat the destruction, neurons use a specialized version of a DNA-repair complex called NuA4, according to a study published in Nature on 15 February. Several autism-linked genes encode some parts of that complex, suggesting that disruption to the DNA-repair mechanism may contribute to autism.The findings help explain how neurons manage what seems to be inevitable damage to their DNA, says Andre Nussenzweig, chief of the Laboratory of Genome Integrity at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the work. Neuronal signaling causes double-stranded DNA breaks specifically in promoter regions, which turn genes on in response to brain activity, an independent team showed in 2015.The new series of mouse experiments shows that neurons elicit NuA4 using NPAS4, a protein that regulates gene expression in neurons in response to brain activity. Some genes that respond to brain activity are strongly linked to autism, according to a 2021 study by the same team.