I first heard about some interesting news a couple days ago on Twitter. An acquaintance of mine,
@UAJamie posted a link to a
New York Times article reporting on some very recent research into possible causes of disorders like autism and schizophrenia. In the past year or so, there have been studies suggesting that the age of the parents may play a role in the risk of autism, but no clear connection has been made, let alone any reason that such should be the case.
In "
Father's Age Linked to Risk of Autism and Schizophrenia", we learn about a new study finding that the older the
father (but not the mother) is, the greater the risk of autism and schizophrenia. The reason? The older the father is at the time the child is conceived, the greater the number of genetic mutations. A very interesting finding, but it raises some questions. Unfortunately, the full article published in
Nature,
Rate of de novo mutations and the importance of father's age to disease risk, is behind a pay wall, so I have to rely on the abstract and news reports. With that in mind, let's dig in.
