Autism predictable through head measurements?

This may be more Medpundit's beat, but as a parent of young children my interest in such stories needs no excuse:

The brains of many autistic children are smaller than normal at birth and then grow at an abnormally fast rate during the first year - a new finding that could lead to clues to the cause of the puzzling disorder. . .

In the latest study, Eric Courchesne and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego . . . studied 48 children between ages 2 and 5 who had already been diagnosed with some form of autism. The scientists asked the children's pediatricians to provide medical records from birth onward, looking for head-size measurements commonly taken throughout the first year. These measurements were compared with national growth charts developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Head circumference at birth was significantly smaller among the autistic children than those without the neurological disorder. And they found dramatic growth of the head between one to two months and three to five months, and another spurt between six and 14 months. On average, the autistic children were at the 25th percentile at birth and by 1 year or so were at the 84th percentile in head size.

By contrast, body length and weight developed normally in autistic children. The results of the study were published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

UPDATE: Read Medpundit's doubts about the study -- once again, the newspapers are trumpeting results that are far from definitive.

A MORE RELIABLE report: activated charcoal offers significant benefits in case of accidental ingestion of peanuts by those with nut allergies. The same article has some other interesting reports on new measures against life-threatening allergies.

Posted by David on July 16, 2003 8:58 AM