Family affair: Two new papers share results from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), a population-based cohort of parents and their children that includes extensive genotype data as well as health information. The first study gives an overview of the MoBa experimental design and analyzes mother-father-child trios to identify direct and indirect sources of genetic influence on children’s height, educational achievement, depression and sleep behavior. The second study examined how age at autism diagnosis affected both child and family well-being. Girls, children with few communication problems, those without intellectual disability and those with older siblings were more likely to be diagnosed at later ages. In terms of outcomes, later diagnosis was associated with higher well-being for mothers and children during childhood, but lower well-being for children during adolescence.
Autism research spotted this week:
- “Lifespan brain structural variation reveals shared organization across mental health conditions” medRxiv
- “Elevated rates of gastrointestinal dysfunction in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities: Not just an autism issue” medRxiv
- “Whose outcomes count? Rethinking measurement in global autism research” Autism
- “Morphogen-guided neocortical organoids with anteroposterior areal identity” Cell Stem Cell
