BEDFORD, Mass. — At Nashoba Learning Group in Bedford, Mass. – an intensive school for children with autism – 75% of the students are boys.
"I think autism is known as an 80% male disorder, and that's certainly what we see in the referrals that we get," said Liz Martineau, the Founder and President of the Nashoba Learning Group.
Martineau is also the mother of a son with autism – and four daughters who do not have autism.
"I think my next child was the most scrutinized child in history," Martineau said. "I was checking off her developmental milestones as I was with my fifth child. I was somewhat comforted knowing autism is more prevalent in boys than girls."
According to Autism Speaks, one in every 37 boys has autism, compared to one in every 151 girls.
That gender discrepancy could be one important clue in autism research. Research has long shown gene mutations, duplications or deletions may be one possible cause of autism. But genes alone can't explain it because there are cases of identical twins where one twin has autism, the other does not.
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An Assistant Professor of Neurobiology at the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Mao Chen has discovered one possible reason why boys may more susceptible: the process of protein regulation in the brain.
"Protein regulates neuro development, regulates the synapses formation," Dr. Chen said. "And in autistic patients, if the regulation goes wrong, some synapses may be too tight, other synapses may be too weak. So an autis[tic] boy may be good at one thing, [and] may not be good at social communication."
Working on mouse models, Dr. Chen and his colleagues identified more than 200 proteins that are more highly regulated in females than in males and may protect female brains from autism.
The research was just published in the journal "Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience."
Dr. Chen is hopeful it one day leads to drug therapy for the disorder by using medication to control protein regulation.
"In the future we can use some drug to manipulate or rectify the protein regulation," Dr. Chen said. "We can design a drug to regulate the protein regulation and rectify the neurodevelopment in the future. But it's just a theory right now."
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Dr. Chen stresses that this is an early study and more research is needed from the scientific community.