BLOG — Autism

Did you know there is a connection between Autism and Microglia in the brain?The Blood-Brain Barrier appears to play a critical role in many diseases. The advent of two-photon microscopy made it possible to watch the blood-brain barrier in a living, breathing mouse. This is interesting. We can now observe how microglia are moving around and coming in to protect and repair the blood-brain barrier as tight junctions. Malfunctioning microglia could lead to neuroinflammation and a wide variety of brain diseases. An interesting article entitled “The Constant Gardeners” was published in the journal Nature in 2012. It suggests that Microglia,...

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental diseases characterized by impaired social interaction, repetitive behaviors, and deficient language and social skills. Reports of autism cases per 1,000 children grew dramatically in the US from 1996 to 2007. The rapid increase in the number of autism cases in such a short period of time suggests that environmental factors are responsible for or a significant contributing factor in these types of diseases. However, complexity arises due to interactions among multiple genes, the environment and epigenetic factors which do not change DNA but are heritable and influence gene expression. Chart...