[Autism and language: some molecular aspects].
BACKGROUND
Autism is a cognitive disorder that includes among its distinguishing symptoms a deficit in the pragmatic component of language. Yet, it seems that there are certain subtypes where other deficiencies have been seen to affect the phonological, lexical, syntactical and morphological components of language.


METHODS
Linkage and association analyses aimed at identifying the genes that constitute causal or risk factors for the disorder have allowed researchers to identify certain loci that appear to be linked or associated to a statistically significant degree with autism endophenotypes of a linguistic nature.


CONCLUSIONS
The target genes in this type of analysis play a number of different biological roles related with the development and functioning of the nervous system. On certain occasions, the loci thus identified coincide with others that had previously been linked to diverse language disorders (one paradigmatic case would be that of the chromosomal region 7q31 in relation to specific language disorder). This suggests that such disorders and autism might share a partially common genetic foundation that would account for the similarities observed between them at the phenotypic level.
Benítez-Burraco
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Departamento de Filología Española, Area de Lingüística, Facultad Filología, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias, España. abenitez@us.es
D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000150:complications / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000235:genetics*