Autism and anxiety insights; and more

Measuring worry: Two new papers explore the relationship between autism and anxiety. The first study describes a network analysis of data from 623 autistic children, showing that specific autism traits give rise to anxiety, namely sensory hypersensitivity and a preference for sameness or predictability. The investigators suggest that these findings might inform therapeutic approaches. A second study compares a suite of screening instruments for anxiety and depression—tools developed for assessing non-autistic people—in a group of 29 autistic adults. Clinical interviews, unsurprisingly, provided the best sensitivity and selectivity, whereas the brief self-assessment tool for anxiety (GAD-7) showed low specificity. The researchers advocate for better tools for diagnosing anxiety in autistic people. The Transmitter has covered past efforts to improve instruments for identifying anxiety in autistic children, as well as the search for biomarkers for an autism-specific form of anxiety.

More autism research we spotted:

• “Complement contributes to hyperactive behavior in the 16p11.2 hemideletion mouse model” bioRxiv

• “FMR1 mutant marmosets show fragile X syndrome phenotypes” Cell Reports
• “Neurobehavioral signatures in overgrowth intellectual disability syndromes: Dissecting genotype-phenotype relationships in the PI3K-AKT-MTOR pathway” medRxiv
• “Exclusive: Kennedy’s autism data project draws more than 100 research proposals, sources say” Reuters
• “Developmental excitation-inhibition imbalance permanently reprograms autism-relevant social brain circuits” bioRxiv
• “Maternal serotonin levels and neurodevelopmental severity in autistic children: A partial replication and extension” JAACAP Open
  See also: “After 60 years, scientists are still trying to crack a mysterious serotonin-autism link”