(Image: Chuck Berman, Chicago Tribune)

BY: STEFANIE REDDING

ANCHOR: CHRISTINA HARTMAN

A new study suggests children with autistic siblings face a greater risk of developing the disorder.

Here’s MSNBC…

“The study found that nearly one in five babies with an autistic older sibling went on to develop autism themselves and if the family has two children with autism there is 32 percent chance that the third sibling will develop the disorder.”

Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton  tells CBS -- to date, experts did not think the risk from sibling to sibling was even half as high as the study found.

“A couple of things, number one this is the largest study to date that looks at families with an autistic child and a subsequent risk for future children and also its done prospectively meaning they started at one point in time and followed those families through a period of time in the future in which the diagnosis was made so again found the rate of autism almost double what doctors previously thought it was.”

CNN’s The Chart reports -- researchers also turned up some interesting results based on demographic information.

“Male babies experienced nearly three times the risk over female infants, 26% versus 9%. Age of parent, gender of the older sibling or birth orders were not predictors of the condition, meaning if the first child in the family does not have ASD, and the second child does, the risk percentages are still the same for the next child.”

The study didn’t take into account other possible causes of autism --- but the LA Times reports --- family history is considered one of the strongest risk factors.

“Up to 15% of autism cases have been linked to specific genetic mutations. If one of those mutations is present in both an autistic child and a parent, the risk to the next child is considerably higher than the rate found in the study. But if the mutation occurs only in the autistic child and not in a parent, that means it arose spontaneously, and future siblings are probably in the clear.”

Previously, researchers believed autism recurrence in younger siblings was somewhere between 3 and 10 percent.

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