The Main Problem With Autism

The main problem with autism in my opinion is in the diagnosis of the disease.  The spectrum of autism has a ridiculously large range, spanning from Asperger’s syndrome to Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD).  Asperger’s is considered the mildest form of autism,  while CDD is the most severe.  The problem with the autism spectrum is that the symptoms and lifestyle of a person with Asperger’s have few similarities with a person diagnosed with CDD, especially when considering the severeness of the symptoms they do share.
These two “types” of autism should not be considered the same disease.  People with Asperger’s are characterized as being obsessed with certain topics and a slight social impairment.  A child with CDD, or Rett syndrome(another severe form of autism) will display rapid loss of social, language, and intellectual abilities as early as age 2.  In some cases, decreased head growth is also associated with these diseases(http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/autism-spectrum-disorders?page=1).
Asperger’s syndrome should not be associated with autism in general.  If you consider only the symptoms of the different “types” of autism, Asperger’s does not belong on the list.  Almost all other forms of autism include symptoms such as; intellectual reduction, severe loss of communication, seizures, and occasionally mental retardation.  I believe Asperger’s is only considered a disease because we don’t understand enough about the causes of different mental diseases and more importantly, society likes to label and categorize people-especially people who seem different.
Asperger’s syndrome is also not strongly associated with any specific genetic mutation, unlike other autism “types”(http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/asperger-syndrome).  This means environmental factors play a larger role in the onset of Asperger’s.  People with Asperger’s simply have somewhat poor social skills and have a slightly obsessive personality(http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/autism-spectrum-disorders?page=1).  These attributes are seen often in people considered “healthy” individuals.  Some studies even show people with Asperger’s are often found to have a higher level of intelligence than those without the disease(http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/asperger-syndrome).
While I don’t believe that Asperger’s syndrome should be included in the autism spectrum, I do not neglect the rest of the spectrum.  Even though autism is a multifactoral disease, I do think the part of the answer to the specific treatment and cure to autism lies in the transsynaptic signaling of certain neuron types in autistic patients. Patients with severe autism often have mutations in specific genes coding for transsynaptic cell adhesion molecules. These molecules are neuroligin and neurexin.
Neurexin molecules are located on the pre-synaptic neuron and it binds to neuroligin, found on the post-synaptic neuron.  When mutations occur in genes encoding for these molecules, it often partially inhibits the ability of neuroligin to leave the endoplasmic reticulum to be transported to it’s correct location in the post-synaptic neuron(http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49734973_Cell_Adhesion_Molecules_and_Their_Involvement_in_Autism_Spectrum_Disorder).  Another result of the mutation is a change is synaptic specificity of neuroligin molecules from glutamatergic neurons to GABAergic neurons(http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49734973_Cell_Adhesion_Molecules_and_Their_Involvement_in_Autism_Spectrum_Disorder).
These mutations cause an increase in the overall increase in inhibitory synaptic transmissions in the brain.  This problem could be at the source of the neurological and physical symptoms of autism.  Genetic modification of these certain genes could be a potential fix to the issue.  Other methods such as supplemental neuroligin and neurexin would likely prove ineffective. Thus, more research into potential solutions to the transsynaptic cell adhesion problem should be addressed in the future.