4.5 Article

Facial asymmetry in parents of children on the autism spectrum

Journal

AUTISM RESEARCH
Volume 14, Issue 11, Pages 2260-2269

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/aur.2612

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder; broad autism phenotype; facial asymmetry; facial morphology; heritability; neurodevelopment

Funding

  1. National Health and Medical Research Council
  2. Telethon Kids Institute
  3. University of Western Australia Faculty of Science

Ask authors/readers for more resources

In this study, greater facial asymmetry was found in parents of autistic individuals compared to age-matched adults without a family history of ASD. This suggests that the broad autism phenotype may manifest as facial asymmetry through heritability factors.
Greater facial asymmetry has been consistently found in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relative to children without ASD. There is substantial evidence that both facial structure and the recurrence of ASD diagnosis are highly heritable within a nuclear family. Furthermore, sub-clinical levels of autistic-like behavioural characteristics have also been reported in first-degree relatives of individuals with ASD, commonly known as the 'broad autism phenotype'. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to examine whether a broad autism phenotype expresses as facial asymmetry among 192 biological parents of autistic individuals (134 mothers) compared to those of 163 age-matched adults without a family history of ASD (113 females). Using dense surface-modelling techniques on three dimensional facial images, we found evidence for greater facial asymmetry in parents of autistic individuals compared to age-matched adults in the comparison group (p = 0.046, d = 0.21 [0.002, 0.42]). Considering previous findings and the current results, we conclude that facial asymmetry expressed in the facial morphology of autistic children may be related to heritability factors.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.5
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available