Biological Causes Of Autism Research Paper

February 17, 2014

Nowadays, children’s health becomes increasingly cared by more and more citizens. Among thousands kinds of diseases, one kind of them which occurs during children’s developing has abstract particular attention from publics, that is, autism. The autism is a serious condition which appears in childhoods and it can persist throughout a person’s whole life and it effects an individual’s social interaction, communication and behavior badly. Unfortunately, the number of autistic children in United States has increased sharply from 1/3000 in mid-1990s to 1/150 recently (Rodier, 2010). Because of the dramatic increasing of people with autism in this several decades, experts were working hard to find out the causes of autism and they believe that the autism is a polygenetic-multifactorial disorder which means that
numerals genes and many other factors may be accounted.
In fact, biological predisposition, prenatal environmental factors and postnatal environmental triggers can result in autistic children.

To begin, one sort of the major causes of autism are biological factors. First, autism can be caused by abnormal genes. To explain, genes are inherited from parents and they are responsible to form all parts of human’s body. For example, blue-eyed couples are more likely to have offspring with blue eyes. In the case of autism, it is generally accepted that siblings and twins of autistic children have increased possibility to be autistic so researchers believe genetic factors can lead to autism. To demonstrate, five percent children who have autistic siblings are autistic; this rate is twenty-five times of children who have un-autism siblings. Furthermore, among identical twins (share one-hundred of genes) of people with autism, seventy-five percent of them are diagnosed to have autism which
is 375 times than usual rates (Cowley, 2000). Therefore, it is clear that hereditary factor is a cause of autism through these statistics. Secondly, unusual brain structure also can result in autistic children. Since language abilities, general emotions and motor functions are usually undeveloped by autistic persons, the brain areas which connected to these abilities are suspected to cause autism. Generally, children with autism have bigger brains than their peers; thus, scientists consider that abnormal brains can be a reason for this disease. For instance, in an autistic person’s brain, the bundles of neurons are wound too tightly in vertical mini-columns in cortical layer which prevent brain structures such as cerebellum, amygdala and hippocampus (which are responsible for language, emotion and motor functions) from communicate normally (Numerow, 2014). As a result, abnormal brain structures can cause autism because many physical symptoms of autism are directly connected to brain areas such as the cerebellum, amygdala and hippocampus.

In conclusion, many biological and environment factors (both before birth and after birth) can cause autism. Since the autism has severe effects on the children and their families, properly treatments are needed. Although there are some treatments already, many of them are extremely expensive. Hopefully, along the development of knowledge about the autism, experts may come up with more cost-efficient therapies in future.

References
Cowley, G. (2000, July 31). Understanding autism. Newsweek 136(5), 48-54.
Henderson, M. (2007, September 12). Searching for the cause of autism. Timesonline.
Laidler, J. (2008). Autism and our toxic environment. Autism Watch.
Numerow, S. (2014, January 27). Autism spectrum disorder [guest lecture]. Langara College, Vancouver, BC.