Neonatal and regressive forms of autism: Diseases with similar symptoms but a different etiology

Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be a debilitating, life-long neurocognitive disease. ASD is caused by genetic and epigenetic factors and largely unknown and poorly understood environmental triggers. Signs and symptoms of ASD often appear in the first year of life while the disease strikes other infants who had previously been developing normally at around 2 years of age. Ozonoff and her colleagues recently suggested that there are three different pathways or trajectories for the development of ASD in infants 6-24 months of age. I hypothesize that pathway 1 is caused by in utero insult/injury, pathway 2 by obstetric complications at birth, and pathway 3 by environmental triggers of ASD affecting infants 0-3 years of age. Faster progress can be made in elucidating the underlying causes of neonatal and regressive forms of ASD if the diseases are investigated separately, instead of being part of the same disorder.