Chromosome 7

Abstract

The chromosome 7q region continues to be the focus of much interest to those searching for autism susceptibility genes. The combined evidence from genome screens, naturally occurring chromosome anomalies in patients with autism, and findings from association studies to date indicates that this region may contain one or several of the genes related to the autism phenotype. Note that, once identified, the alleles will most likely be found to be normally distributed in the population as a whole. Only when they are inherited with other susceptibility alleles, and specific environmental insults occur as well, would they lead to a phenotype noticeable enough to come to clinical attention. Likewise, the environmental risk factors with which they are hypothesized to interact are probably also commonly experienced by many individuals in the population without untoward effects. Due to this complexity, it is not likely that predictive testing will be particularly effective. Nevertheless, identification of susceptibility alleles will lead to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms, and, hopefully, a new generation of treatments for individuals with autism. © 2005 by The The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.