Gender hormones may lend to social disorder therapies

By WTN News
08/24/05
Madison, Wis. -- Gender politics aside, every biologist knows that men and women truly are different.

Social disorders such as autism constitute one area where those differences come to the fore: around 80 percent of all autism cases, for example, occur in men. Social play behaviors also differ greatly between the sexes - just about everyone agrees that young boys play "rougher" than girls.

Early in human development, critical brain proteins known as steroid receptors lay most of the groundwork for ensuing sexual destinies. The receptors bind to hormones such as testosterone and estrogen and set in motion gender blueprints for a lifetime.

To understand why autistic children have trouble engaging in social interactions, researchers have long observed "rough-and-tumble" play - the propensity to bite, wrestle or pounce - in juvenile rats. Scientists were convinced that testosterone solely dictated the onset of such behavior.

But researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now made the surprising finding that estrogen-and even dopamine, a neurotransmitter-also play critical roles. The work, which appeared online Aug. 16 in the journal Endocrinology, can one day help to diagnose new autism cases and can potentially pave the way for new hormone-based therapeutic approaches that counteract the social difficulties of autism, says senior author Anthony Auger, an assistant professor of psychology.

Read full article at: http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=2159

For more information and resources on autism, please visit:
http://www.autismconcepts.com/.