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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) represents an etiologically heterogeneous disorder in which a myriad of genetic and environmental risk factors perturb common underlying molecular pathways in the brain. ASD patients along with core behavioral deficits also exhibit other psychiatric and medical conditions, such as intellectual disability, epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and sleep disorders1-3. Significant ASD population also exhibit increased anxiety such as phobias, withdrawal in social situation and obsessive compulsive disorder 4, 5. Additionally, there are subsets of ASD population who exhibit impaired fear conditioning 6.
Evidences from a vast majority of twin and family studies have suggested ASD to have a strong genetic basis7-11. Autism genetics is highly …show more content…
Notably, a new genetic study shows even siblings with autism often have very different DNA mutations from one another further implying the heterogeneity of ASD14. Although, the genetic basis is well documented, a large upsurge in clinical cases of idiopathic Autism in recent past directs us to the fact that environmental risk factors might have an important contribution to this upsurge either by causing new mutation or increasing the risk in a genetically predisposed individual 15-17. One such animal model is Valproic acid model of Autism 18-20. This model is based on the discovery that when the anticonvulsant drug, VPA, is administered to women during their first trimester of

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