Autistic children's siblings show similar symptoms

Researchers from Washington University in St Louis have been looking into the brothers and sisters of children with autism to see if they suffer from any of the symptoms of the condition. They studied nearly 3,000 children in 1,235 families whose brothers or sisters had autism. The researchers found that 20% of the siblings had received a diagnosis of language delay or speech problems early in life and half of them had patterns of speech typical of autism. Symptoms of autism in undiagnosed siblings were more likely to occur in families where more than one child had been formally diagnosed with the condition. It was less common for siblings to be affected with autistic traits than for non-identical twins.