Autism Spectrum Disorders: Advances in Proteomics

Autism is a class of developmental disorders with extremely high rates of disability, affecting patients throughout their lives. There is no cure to date clinically, and early rehabilitation interventions can improve some of the behavioral problems of autistic patients, but these are limited by age and often have minimal effects in older adults with autism. Early diagnosis is also necessary while developing effective autism therapies. At present, the early diagnosis of autism is dependent on the search for effective markers in an attempt to screen differentially expressed proteins in autistic patients using high-throughput assays, such as synaptic scaffolding proteins, microtubule-associated proteins, apolipoproteins, immunoglobulin G complement factor-related proteins, etc. It would also be a big step forward for mechanistic studies of autism if a valid biomarker for autism could be found.