It has been recently revealed in a report that the Autism Research Team from the WA’s Telethon Institute of Child Health Research is looking for pregnant women who are already mother to an autistic child.

It was found by Professor Andrew Whitehouse from the University of Western Australia that could be inferred that a child is autistic if it tends to have an enlarged head and if it is exposed to higher levels of the testosterone hormone while the mother is pregnant. There has been a steady rise in the number of autism cases in the world recently, and it affects one in every hundred people at this point of time.

It was further added by Professor Whitehouse that autism doesn’t seem to develop till the age of 2 to 3 years. This is why these are only signs and symptoms according to which the disorder might be inferred before that.

"If we could detect autism much earlier, we could start intervention when the course of the brain development is much easier to alter. We're also hoping to provide extra training to child health nurses to help them identify warning- signs”, said Professor Whitehouse.

There is need for developing better techniques, which will be able to detect autism as early as in the mother’s womb, so that the parents can decide whether they want to continue with the pregnancy.

Diagnosis also varies according to the severity of the case. It is essential to find out what stage and severity levels of autism the child is suffering from, so that using the proper treatment, the disorder can be cured.

It’s a matter of time to see how far the development of this research goes and how it can be found that the child is affected by this disorder.