By Kimberly Hayes Taylor
We may be a step closer in understanding what causes autism, say University of Missouri researchers after finding differences between the facial characteristics of children who have autism and those who don’t.
Kristina Aldridge, lead author and assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Missouri, began looking at facial characteristics of autistic children after another researcher, Judith Miles, professor emerita in the School of Medicine and the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, mentioned, “There is just something about their faces. They are beautiful, but there is just something about them.”
“Children with other disorders such as Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome have very distinct facial features. Autism is much less striking,” she says. “You can’t pick them out in a crowd of kids, but you can pick them out mathematically.”
When researchers took three-dimensional images of the children, they discovered autistic children have a broader upper face with wider eyes, a shorter middle region of the face including the cheeks and nose and a broader or wider mouth and philtrum -- the area below the nose and above the top lip.
Aldridge analyzed 64 boys with autism and 41 typically developing boys ages 8 to 12 using the 3-D images of each boys’ head. She also mapped out 17 points on the face, such as the corner of the eye and the divot in the upper lip. When the overall geometry of the face was calculated and the two groups were compared, she noticed statistical differences in autistic children’s faces.
Researchers also noticed even more differences in a smaller group of autistic children.
“They showed differences in clinical and behavioral traits as well,” she says. “That would tell us about multiple causes of autism.”
Aldridge says the images provide a clue to what happens in the embryo during the middle of the first trimester of pregnancy when the face begins to develop. It may help researchers understand if something environmentally or genetically is happening in the uterus during pregnancy that causes autism.
“This is clear support that the cause of autism is likely happening before birth,” Aldridge says. “This allows us to start looking at those hypotheses more directly.
I kind of get this actually just because I am around so many autistic kids at my son's therapies, and well, I have one of my own. There is something different about their faces that I have always noticed but never been able to pinpoint. I was just thinking this morning how my son's eye's are farther apart than the rest of the families. We've also always talked about he has a wide mouth while the rest of us don't. I have a long philtrum so I haven't noticed that on him.
Interesting!
I was impressed to see that article. Hopefully the researchers will narrow down the DNA or whatever that is damaged based on the clues of the facial features being different.
My son has a long philtrum like his dad, and wide-set eyes like me. I couldn't see that his middle portion was short, though. He hasn't shown any signs of Autism, so I don't know if all three factors need to be present or what.
It'll be fascinating to follow this research...
I do think the study is very interesting. I wonder where on the Spectrum the children with Autism were that were tested. Did they include those with Aspergers? I think that autism is most likely caused by a variety of factors, both genetic and environmental. With the wide range of abilities along the Spectrum, is there a corresponding wide range of facial differences from very little, to a large difference?
Quoting rccmom:I do think the study is very interesting. I wonder where on the Spectrum the children with Autism were that were tested. Did they include those with Aspergers? I think that autism is most likely caused by a variety of factors, both genetic and environmental. With the wide range of abilities along the Spectrum, is there a corresponding wide range of facial differences from very little, to a large difference?
I was thinking there's a lot of factors to consider. I hope I can find more info on this research.
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on Oct. 25, 2011 at 6:02 PM