Recent studies have validated the phenomenon of autistic regression, but little is known about how regressive and congenital onsets of the disorder influence parents' thinking about autism and its eti

The gap

Consensus across the literature

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Subclinical neuropsychiatric trait variation in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: a cohort study (2026) · doi

  While our study has many strengths, including a deeply phenotyped cohort of biological parents with children followed from infancy and assessed and diagnosed by clinicians who are experts in autism, certain factors may limit the generalizability of findings and should be addressed in future work. First, findings from this study may not generalize to more heterogeneous samples with differing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic demographics (See Table  1). Importantly, families were excluded from the original study if either parent was diagnosed with intellectual disability, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or psychosis; while some parents have subsequently reported diagnoses during the course of the study, this sample is comprised of mothers and fathers who may carry a lower trait burden than expected among the broader population of parents of autistic children. While there is compelling evidence to conclude that elevated subthreshold autistic and neuropsychiatric traits in HL- Multiplex families are largely attributable to genetic transmission [4, 22, 24], it is possible that parenting stress could be a contributing factor to the elevations in psychiatric traits (i.e., anxiety and depression in moth- ers of autistic children) [64]. This, however, is not likely to be the main driver of our results as prior work sug- gests that neuropsychiatric conditions in parents of autistic children are present prior to the environmental impact of raising an autistic child [29, 65]. Further, eleva- tions in parental psychiatric traits in families with autistic children in the current study remained after correcting for the enrolled child’s adaptive ability, suggesting that increased support needs for the child, and by extension parenting stress [53], do not wholly account for parental psychiatric phenotypes. Future molecular genetic investi- gations incorporating polygenic scores for ASD and other neuropsychiatric conditions, rare variant burden infor- mation, and family-based sequencing will be essential to parsing genetic and environmental effects and building additional lines of evidence to support the findings of this study. The ASEBA was used in the current study to mea- sure neuropsychiatric traits across ADHD, anxious, and depressive domains. Future studies employing more tar- geted quantitative trait scales for each of these domains could be useful in further characterizing the findings in our study. Finally, our power analysis indicated that lim- ited sample size for the HL-Multiplex group could have precluded the ability to detect more subtle, but meaning- ful, cross-trait and between-parent correlations.

  Keywords: autistic children parents neuropsychiatric traits future families trait genetic psychiatric child diagnosed parent sample burden
• Enhancing Positive Behavioral Intentions of Typical Children towards Children with Autism (2012)

  Although the etiology, pathophysiology and genetic transmission of autism can be controversial and not completely understood, autism may best be perceived as a heterogeneous disorder, resulting from multiple genetic and environmental factors, which are often exacerbated by neurologic, cytogenetic, neurotransmitter, and immunologic abnormalities (Hollander, DelGiudice-Asch, & Simon, 1999).

  Keywords: genetic autism etiology pathophysiology transmission controversial completely understood best perceived heterogeneous disorder resulting multiple environmental
• Congenital Versus Regressive Onset of Autism Spectrum Disorders (2005) · doi

  Recent studies have validated the phenomenon of autistic regression, but little is known about how regressive and congenital onsets of the disorder influence parents' thinking about autism and its etiology.

  Keywords: recent validated phenomenon autistic regression little known regressive congenital onsets disorder influence parents thinking autism
• Parental Stress Related to Caring for a Child With Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Benefit of Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Parental Stress: A Systematic Review (2024) · doi

  This review highlights the significance of further research on the severity of autism symptoms and how they are related to the level of parental stress, and it thoroughly examines the findings of pertinent studies on parental stress and autism.

  Keywords: autism parental stress review highlights significance further severity symptoms related level thoroughly examines pertinent