By Lauren Swick Jordan

You’ve all heard it by now – one out of every 45 kids has autism.

With numbers that large, it seems to me that the next logical discussion needs to be around mental health. Mental health of the caregivers, of the siblings, but most importantly, of the person with autism.

We had a scare a few days ago.

SAN DIEGO — San Diego-based Illumina announced Wednesday that it will take part in a “big data” project that will make genomic data of autism patients and their families available for analysis over the Internet.

The Hartwell Autism Research and Technology Initiative will upload 5,000 genomes involving autism from the National Institute of Mental Health genetics repository to Illumnia BaseSpace, a cloud-computing system powered by Amazon Web Services.

Researchers will be able to access BaseSpace to analyze the data and determine the genomic variation across the samples.

Estimating autism’s prevalence is tricky. No strategy is perfect, so researchers rely on a combination of approaches, such as sweeping national surveys and smaller pockets of meticulous monitoring.

Nearly 9 out of 10 parents of children with autism have tried unproven alternative treatments, such as acupuncture, fish oil or special diets, to help their children overcome symptoms. This practice is most common among highly educated parents and those with children under 4 years of age.

BY JESSICA WRIGHT

Autism will cost the U.S. $268 billion this year — roughly 1.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product¹. By 2025, the price tag could balloon to $461 billion.

Few would dispute that children who are exhibiting signs or symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder should be referred and tested. It is when we talk about screening every child for autism that the debate becomes heated.

BY SIRI CARPENTER

Autism is usually thought to be a lifelong condition, but a small number of children lose the core symptoms and shed the diagnosis. Some researchers are beginning to explore how common this may be, and why some children outgrow autism.