PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Magnetic imaging may help diagnose autism in children before they reach school age, U.S. researchers say.
Researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia used magnetoencephalography to detect changes in magnetic fields in the brain as subjects listened to a series of beeps, vowels and sentences. Study leader Timothy Roberts says 25 children with autistic spectrum disorders had an average delay of 11 milliseconds reacting to sounds vs. 17 age-matched children without autism.
The delays were similar among the children with autism spectrum disorders, whether or not they had language impairments, the study says.
The study, published in Autism Research, suggests measuring the sound delay may become a standardized way to diagnose autism before a child reaches school age. Children are often not diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders until school age, when neurodevelopmental disorder-caused impairments in verbal communication, social interaction or behavior are usually detected, the researchers say.
"More work needs to be done before this can become a standard tool, but this pattern of delayed brain response may be refined into the first imaging biomarker for autism," Roberts says in a statement.
