Fwd: [CasiClubhouse] Testosterone in girls' brains offers clue to autism's ca...

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From: binstock@...Reply-to: CasiClubhouse Sent: 3/16/2010 4:38:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight TimeSubj: [CasiClubhouse] Testosterone in girls & apos; brains offers clue to autism & apos;s cause

Testosterone in girls' brains offers clue to autism's cause. Girls with higher testosterone levels at birth are more likely to have poor communication skills and social difficulties at age 10, Australian scientists have discovered. ~Sydney Morning Herald "The girls in the study with greater testosterone exposure - measured from samples of umbilical cord blood stored when they were born - were more likely to show deficiencies in female traits considered positive, such as empathy and social awareness.". Fetal androgen exposure and pragmatic language ability of girls in middle childhood: Implications for the extreme male-brain theory of autismWhitehouse AJ, Maybery MT, Hart R, Mattes E, Newnham JP, Sloboda DM, Stanley FJ, Hickey M.Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child Health Research, University of Western Australia, Australia; Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia.Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Mar 3. [Epub ahead of print]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20206450Prenatal exposure to testosterone has been shown to affect fetal brain maturation as well as postnatal cognition and behavior in animal studies. Although there are well-established sex-differences in the use of social communication (or 'pragmatic language') in humans, there has been limited investigation of the association between fetal testosterone exposure and postnatal pragmatic language ability. In this prospective study, pragmatic language skills, assessed using a pragmatic language score (PLS), were measured in 78 girls aged 10 years and correlated with testosterone levels in umbilical cord blood. A measure of the biologically active, 'free' fraction of testosterone, the free androgen index (FAI), was positively correlated with the PLS (R=.3). Regression analyses showed that the FAI was a significant, positive predictor of pragmatic language difficulties in girls after controlling for maternal and infant-health variables (B=0.02, 95% confidence interval=0.01-0.04, p=0.02). This is the first prospective study to identify an association between early life testosterone exposure and pragmatic language difficulties in girls. These novel findings are discussed with reference to the 'extreme male-brain' theory of autism..