English

This web page with title Biological Research on Autism means to discuss the problems of autistic persons and their families. On this argument the medicine is very far behind with its study if compared with other branches because this problem was considered psichological in origin and due to the behaviour of both parents with particular blame of the mother. Autism, specially in Europe, was considered for at least one century a disease which, according the rules of psychoanalysis, could be cured by means of psychological sessions with catastrophic results.

Today in the light of biological discoveries nobody questions its organic nature of this disease and in particular its genetic origin.

The first systematic study was made on twin couples in 1977 (Folstein S., Rutter M: Infantile autism: a gen etic of 21 twin pairs. - Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 18, 297-321 (1977)): four twin homozygotes couples out of 11 were both autistic while no one of the 10 heterozygotes couples were autistic. This study was repeated by other researchers (Steffenburg S. et al.: A twin study of autism in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. - Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 30, 405-416 (1989) -- Bailey A. et al.: Autism as a strongly genetic disorder: evidence from a British twin study. - Psychological Medicine 25, 63-77 (1995)).

From these results it turns out that 80% of twin homozygotes couple are both autistic which is equivalent to a risk with respect the normal population of 1500 greater.(See: R.Plomin, J.C. DeFries, G.E.McClearn e P. McGuffin: Behavioral Genetics, IV Edition - Worth Publishers New York (2001)).

So nowadays autism is regarded, from one problem due to the environment, one of the most hereditary mental diseases (Rutter M et al.: Autism: syndrome defition and possible genetic mechanism. In Plomin R, McClearn G.E: Nature, Nurture and Psychology pp. 269-284 - APA, Washington (1993))

In this web pages we shall take into cosiderations all aspects of biological problem. In this situation we shall consider all publications which can help the autistic people in their sufferings and their parents.

These contributions shall be divided into three classes: A) Contributions for the health of autistics in which a predominance of "if" and "but". B) Contributions for the health of autistics in which a predominance of positive factors are present.C) Various hypotheses on the nature of autism.

The first two categories cannot be separated clearly between them: this is the reason why we give the possibility to intervene on the single contribution by mean of mails which we expect to be numerous.

A) Contributions for the health of autistics in which a predominance of "if" and "but".

B) Contributions for the health of autistics in which a predominance of positive factors are present.

C) Various hypotheses on the nature of autism.