Genome-wide association study of autistic-like traits in a general population study of young adults

Lay abstract: It has been proposed that autistic-like traits in the general population lie on a continuum, with clinical Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), representing the extreme end of this distribution. The current study undertook a genome-wide association (GWA) scan of 965 young Western Australian adults to identify novel risk variants associated with autistic-like traits. No associations reached genome-wide significance; however, a review of nominally associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) indicated two positional candidate loci that have been previously implicated in autistic-like trait etiology. Scientific abstract: Research has proposed that autistic-like traits in the general population lie on a continuum, with clinical ASD representing the extreme end of this distribution. Inherent in this proposal is that biological mechanisms associated with clinical ASD may also underpin variation in autistic-like traits within the general population. A GWA study using 2,462,046 SNPs was undertaken for ASD in 965 individuals from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study. No SNP associations reached genome-wide significance (p