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Language Impairment and Dyslexia Genes Influence Language Skills in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders
Author(s) -
Eicher John D.,
Gruen Jeffrey R.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
autism research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.656
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1939-3806
pISSN - 1939-3792
DOI - 10.1002/aur.1436
Subject(s) - dyslexia , specific language impairment , psychology , autism , comorbidity , vocabulary , genome wide association study , developmental psychology , genetic association , autism spectrum disorder , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , genetics , biology , gene , psychiatry , genotype , linguistics , philosophy , reading (process) , single nucleotide polymorphism
Language and communication development is a complex process influenced by numerous environmental and genetic factors. Many neurodevelopment disorders include deficits in language and communication skills in their diagnostic criteria, including autism spectrum disorders ( ASD ), language impairment ( LI ), and dyslexia. These disorders are polygenic and complex with a significant genetic component contributing to each. The similarity of language phenotypes and comorbidity of these disorders suggest that they may share genetic contributors. To test this, we examined the association of genes previously implicated in dyslexia, LI , and/or language‐related traits with language skills in children with ASD . We used genetic and language data collected in the A utism G enome R esearch E xchange ( AGRE ) and S imons S implex C ollection ( SSC ) cohorts to perform a meta‐analysis on performance on a receptive vocabulary task. There were associations with LI risk gene ATP2C2 and dyslexia risk gene MRPL19 . Additionally, we found suggestive evidence of association with CMIP , GCFC2 , KIAA0319L , the DYX 2 locus ( ACOT13 , GPLD1 , and FAM65B ), and DRD2 . Our results show that LI and dyslexia genes also contribute to language traits in children with ASD . These associations add to the growing literature of generalist genes that contribute to multiple related neurobehavioral traits. Future studies should examine whether other genetic contributors may be shared among these disorders and how risk variants interact with each other and the environment to modify clinical presentations. Autism Res 2015, 8: 229–234 . © 2014 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.