Girls may require more mutations than boys to develop autism
Result may help explain why more males wind up with disorder
Compared with males diagnosed with autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders, females with the disorders have more mutations in their DNA, scientists report in the March 6 American Journal of Human Genetics.
In some still mysterious way, females may be better able to protect themselves against these mutations, some scientists think. That idea may help explain a striking difference: Four boys receive an autism diagnosis for every girl who does.
Small studies have hinted that girls can endure more harmful mutations than boys (SN: 8/13/11, p. 20), but the new results are especially convincing because they come from a large group of people with neurodevelopmental disorders including autism, says human geneticist Ivan Iossifov of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.