A description of medical conditions in adults with autism spectrum disorder: A follow-up of the 1980s Utah/UCLA Autism Epidemiologic Study

VARPRISM: incorporating variant prioritization in tests of de novo mutation association

Background

Patients with certain genetic diseases, such as autism spectrum disorder, have increased rates of de novo mutations within some protein-coding genes.

Results

We introduce the VARiant PRIoritization SuM (VARPRISM), a software package which incorporates functional variant prioritization information to improve the power to detect de novo mutations influencing disease risk. VARPRISM evaluates the consequence of any given exonic mutation on the protein sequence to estimate the likelihood that the mutation is benign or damaging and conducts a likelihood ratio test on the gene level. We analyzed the Simons Simplex Collection of 2508 parent-offspring autism trios using VARPRISM, replicating 44 genes previously implicated in autism susceptibility and identifying 20 additional candidate genes, including MYO1E, KCND3, PDCD1, DLX3, and TSPAN4 (false discovery rate < 0.3).

Conclusion

By incorporating functional predictions, VARPRISM improved the statistical power to identify de novo mutations increasing disease risks. VARPRISM is available at http://www.hufflab.org/software/VARPRISM.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13073-016-0341-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Persistent Angiogenesis in the Autism Brain: An Immunocytochemical Study of Postmortem Cortex, Brainstem and Cerebellum

In the current work, we conducted an immunocytochemical search for markers of ongoing neurogenesis (e.g. nestin) in auditory cortex from postmortem sections of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and age-matched control donors. We found nestin labeling in cells of the vascular system, indicating blood vessels plasticity. Evidence of angiogenesis was seen throughout superior temporal cortex (primary auditory cortex), fusiform cortex (face recognition center), pons/midbrain and cerebellum in postmortem brains from ASD patients but not control brains. We found significant increases in both nestin and CD34, which are markers of angiogenesis localized to pericyte cells and endothelial cells, respectively. This labeling profile is indicative of splitting (intussusceptive), rather than sprouting, angiogenesis indicating the blood vessels are in constant flux rather than continually expanding.