NEW YORK — Just published findings from Harvard Medical School and other U.S. institutions have shed new light on the genetic basis for autism.
Carried out in collaboration with researchers and families from Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, the research offers hope that this new understanding will allow a faster method of finding a cure for this mystifying and isolating disease.
Middle East countries were chosen for the research locations because of the number of large families and the tendency of cousins to marry each other. Such conditions increase the probabilities of finding rare genes.