title: The Relationship Among Genetic Heritability, Environmental Effects, and Autism Spectrum Disorders: 37 Pairs of Ascertained Twin Study.
abstract: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) comprise a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders that have strong heritability. To better understand the heritable factors in twins with clinically diagnosed ASD and to discuss the relationship between social impairments and genetic and environmental factors. In last 13 years, over 12,000 cases of ASD were diagnosed in the children's development and behavior center, the authors review 37 pairs of these twins, in each pair, and at least 1 twin had been diagnosed with an ASD, and found that the concordance rate was 80% [95% confidence interval (CI) 51.9-95.7%] for monozygotic twins and 13.6% (95% CI: 2.9-34.9%) for dizygotic twins. The heritability of social impairments for ASD was 60.9% (95% CI: 47.3-74.5%). In addition, the rate of nonshared environmental factors was 39.1% (95% CI: 25.5-52.7%), and there were no shared environmental effects. Genetics and special environmental effect play an important role on ASD social impairments.
authors: Children's Development Behavior Center, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
authors: Wenlin
authors: W
authors: Deng
authors: Children's Development Behavior Center, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China zouxbsysu@163.com.
authors: Xiaobing
authors: X
authors: Zou
authors: Children's Development Behavior Center, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
authors: Hongzhu
authors: H
authors: Deng
authors: Children's Development Behavior Center, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
authors: Jianying
authors: J
authors: Li
authors: Children's Development Behavior Center, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
authors: Chun
authors: C
authors: Tang
authors: Department of Statistical Science School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangdong, China.
authors: Xueqin
authors: X
authors: Wang
authors: Department of Statistical Science School of Mathematics and Computational Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangdong, China.
authors: Xiaobo
authors: X
authors: Guo
mesh_terms: D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000235:genetics*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic
keywords: autism spectrum disorders; genetics; social impairments; twins