Science Blog is a daily read for me. This story about a possible placental link to autism is a good example of the things they catch.
In previous work, Kliman had observed an unusual pathologic finding in the placentas from children with Asperger Syndrome, an ASD condition which, like autism, impairs the ability to relate to others.
“By serendipity, at a dinner party I happened to sit next to George M. Anderson, a research scientist in the Yale Child Study Center who had access to many cases of children with ASD,” said Kliman. “We realized that by working together we might be able to determine if this placental abnormality could be a useful clinical marker.”
With the help of Andrea Jacobs-Stannard, a student in Kliman’s laboratory, and Katarzyna Chawarska and Fred R. Volkmar of the Yale Child Study Center, the group designed a study to see if the placental abnormality, specifically the presence of trophoblast inclusions, was a marker for ASD. The multidisciplinary team of Yale researchers compared placentas from 13 children with ASD to those from 61 unaffected children for the presence of trophoblast inclusions.
They found that the placentas from ASD children were three times more likely to have the inclusions. Kliman and the team identified trophoblast inclusions by performing microscopic examinations of placental tissues.
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