Hello spacedog-ga,
A good resource for information about Asperger's syndrome (AS) is the
website of OASIS (Online Asperger Syndrome Information & Support,
http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger).
The OASIS website includes an article titled “Asperger Syndrome” by
Stephen Bauer, M.D., M.P.H. in which he describes the “Epidemiology”,
“Definition”, “Clinical Features”, “Asperger Syndrome Through the
Lifespan” and “Thoughts for Management in School”.
In this article, Dr. Bauer states the following:
“The best studies that have been carried out to date suggest that AS
is considerably more common than "classic" autism. Whereas autism has
traditionally been felt to occur in about 4 out of every 10,000
children, estimates of Asperger syndrome have ranged as high as 20-25
per 10,000.”
He goes on to say:
“In some cases there is a clear genetic component, with one parent
(most often the father) showing either the full picture of AS or at
least some of the traits associated with AS; genetic factors seem to
be more common in AS compared to more classic autism.”
Another good source is the website of the Autism-PDD Resources Network
(http://www.autism-pdd.net). In an article posted there from the Duke
Center for Human Genetics (http://www.autism-pdd.net/research.html),
the following is stated:
“Since it is a known fact that more males have autism than females,
researchers believed that autism might be associated with a
non-working gene on the X chromosome. Recent data for our group and
others have shown that it is unlikely that a gene on the X chromosome
causes the majority of cases of autism.
How do we know this? By studying many different families in which more
than one member has autism, or a variant of autism such as Asperger’s
syndrome or PDD, we have seen that in a number of families the "gene"
is passed through the father to a male child with autism. Since a
father transmits an X chromosome only to his daughters and not his
sons, the "gene" cannot be on the X chromosome in these families.”
On the discussion of siblings and Autism, an interesting article can
be found at the website of Jeff and Cathy Romanczuk, which they call
“An Autistic Family Home Page, The Romanczuk World View”,
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/3959.
The Romanczuk’s have a thesis posted
(http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/3959/2.htm) in which they
state the following:
“In six studies compiled by Smalley in 1988, the prevalence of autism
in siblings was found to be 2.7 percent. Although this percentage
seems small, using 4 or 5 cases of autism in 10,000 births from the
general population, this 2.7 percent is about 75 times greater than
the norm. Piven and Folstein point out that the risk of autism in
siblings could be even higher, since parents of autistic children
often limit their plans to have subsequent children.”
Another document which discusses the occurrence of autism is siblings
can be found at the website of International Birth Defects Information
Systems, IBIS (http://ibis-birthdefects.org/start/asper.htm). This
document includes the following information about monozygotic
(identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins:
“A strong genetic component in autism is indicated by an increased
concordance rate in monozygotic (MZ) vs dizygotic (DZ) twins (Bailey
et al., 1995) and a risk to sibs of idiopathic cases that is 75 times
greater than the general population prevalence (Bolton et al., 1994)
... no recorded cases of an autistic child having an overtly autistic
parent, ... it is unusual to find more than 1 autistic child in a
sibship ... MZ twins showed 36% concordance, ... DZ twins showed no
concordance ... Ritvo et al. (1985) found a concordance rate for
autism of 23.5% in dizygotic twins and 95.7% in monozygotic twins ...
epidemiologic study of same-sex autistic twins ... 60% of monozygotic
pairs were concordant for autism vs no dizygotic pairs ...”
More information can be found at the following websites:
The Center for the Study of Autism
http://www.autism.org/asperger.html
HealthlinkUSA
http://www.healthlinkusa.com/content/28ent.htm
Federation of Invisible Disabilities
http://www.fids.bc.ca/aspergers.html
International Special Education.com
http://www.internationalsped.com/documents/autism2(7)c.doc
Autism Society of America
http://www.autism-society.org
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill
http://www.nami.org/helpline/asperger.htm
Wired.com article, December 2001, “The Geek Syndrome”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
I hope you have found this information helpful. If you feel that I
have not fully answered your question, please request clarification.
Good luck in your research.
Googlenut-ga
Google Search Terms:
"Asperger's syndrome" OR autism
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Asperger%27s+syndrome%22+OR+autism+&btnG=Google+Search
asperger's father genetic OR genetics OR heredity OR hereditary
://www.google.com/search?q=asperger%27s+father+genetic+OR+genetics+OR+heredity+OR+hereditary&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&start=10&sa=N
"Asperger's syndrome" heredity OR hereditary
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%22Asperger%27s+syndrome%22+heredity+OR+hereditary&spell=1
"autistic parent"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22autistic+parent%22+&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&start=10&sa=N
Asperger's "one parent"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=Asperger%27s+%22one+parent%22
sperger's genetic percent OR percentage
://www.google.com/search?q=Asperger%27s+genetic+percent+OR+percentage&btnG=Google+Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off |
