Autism research at IMFAR 2014

So, here we go again as the annual IMFAR (International Meeting for Autism Research) meeting gets underway for 2014.

As in previous years (see here and see here), I am a watcher rather than an attender but do like to keep an eye on the conference because of the wealth of autism research talent it includes. That and also because the conference often provides a sort of 'heads-up' as to what might be appearing in the peer-reviewed literature over the coming months and hence future blogging material.

The on-line searchable program book is live (see here) but I'd like to draw your attention to a few abstracts which I found particularly interesting:

• The high prevalence of autism spectrum disorders among children with intellectual disabilities (see here).
• Psychiatric and medical conditions among adults with ASD (see here)
• Low endogenous fecal chymotrypsin: a possible biomarker for autism? (see here).
• Endogenous retrovirus expression in two mouse models of autism spectrum disorders (see here).
• Early characteristics of children who lose their autism diagnosis between age 2 and 4 (see here).
• Prevalence of obesity in autism spectrum disorders and associated risk factors (see here).
• The effectiveness of methylcobalamin and folinic acid treatment on adaptive behavior in children with autistic disorder (see here).
• Oxidative stress and immune cytokines in plasma of young children with autism spectrum disorder and recent language and/or social regression: a prospective case-control study (see here).
• Molecular analysis of inflamed ileocolonic tissue from GI symptomatic ASD children (see here).
• Placental features in ASD compared to controls: a community based cohort in Brooklyn (see here)
• Neonatal cytokines and chemokines and risk of autism spectrum disorder: the Early Markers for Autism (EMA) study (see here).
• Paternal age-related changes in DNA methylation from an autism-enriched cohort (see here)

There is a lot more research being presented, some of which I'm sure will be making headlines over the next few days. So, if you have a few hours free, head over to the conference website and see what's happening or if you're a Twitterererer, use #IMFAR2014 and follow proceedings there...