01:52Developing a treatment for autism - science
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Autism affects around one in 100 children with boys at a higher risk than girls. The number of people diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder has been dramatically increasing since the 1980s. Some of this is down to better diagnosis but what doctors want to know is whether autism itself is actually becoming more common. Didier Destatte's daughter Rosalie suffers from autism. He said: "I have called Rosalie 'my great mystery' since she was a little girl. It's both about her as a person, and her disability. Here in this house, for example, she can have between 20 and 30 seconds of independence before it is necessary to look after her. It is in the long run that this is difficult to manage." There is still no effective drug treatment although recent advances in 3D imaging and genetics have given scientists new hope. Europe is at the cutting edge of autism research with its just-launched EU-AIMS programme. One of its most exciting breakthroughs so far is a hint it might be possible to reverse some of the brain changes in autism. Thomas Bourgeron is a world authority in autism genetics. A researcher at the Institute Pasteur in Paris, he said: "Initially, there is a diagnosis of autism by a psychiatrist, this is very important. Afterwards, a blood test allow us to isolate a sample of DNA. Here we have all the chromosome - in this case 11 - of an individual. "You can virtually explore the genome and sometimes we can see the signal falls. And what this lower signal shows is t
Published 2014-11-07 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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