Researchers find abnormality in brain layers of autistic children

By Gene Emery NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Researchers say they have uncovered key abnormalities in some of the layers of the brains of children with autism, an indication that the foundation for the problem is laid early in fetal development. Using a unique collection of molecular tags applied to the brains after the children had died, they found patches along the convoluted surface of the brain where some usual components of cells were missing. Brain cells were still present in those patches, but they lacked proteins seen in normal brain cells, said Dr. Rich Stoner, coauthor of a paper on the results that appears in the March 27 New England Journal of Medicine. The team used the tags to look for 25 unique markers of healthy cells and of specific genes in the brains of children who had died between the ages of 2 and 15 years.