When Marc and Cristina Easton’s son was diagnosed with autism at 20 months, the Baltimore couple left the doctor’s appointment in confusion. Their toddler – who was very social – didn’t resemble the picture of the condition they thought they knew. And the specialists could offer little clarity about why or what lay ahead.It wasn’t until four years after their child’s diagnosis that the Eastons finally began to get answers that offered them a glimmer of understanding. This summer, a team from Princeton and the Flatiron Institute released a paper showing evidence for four distinct autism phenotypes, each defined by its own constellation of behaviors and genetic traits. The dense, data-heavy paper was published with little fanfare. But to the Eastons, who are among the thousands of families who volunteered their medical information for the study, the findings felt seismic.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“This idea that we’re seeing not one but many stories of autism made a lot of sense to me,” Cristina said.For decades, autism has been described as a spectrum – an elastic term that stretches from nonverbal children to adults with doctorates. Beneath that vast range lies a shared pattern of social communication and behavioral differences, long resistant to neat explanations.Now, advances in brain imaging, genetics and computational science are revealing discreet biological subtypes. The discoveries could one day lead to more accurate diagnoses and treatments – raising profound questions about whether autism should be seen as something to cure or as an essential facet of human diversity.There are a few high-impact mutations that alone appear to lead to autism. But researchers now suspect that the majority of cases arise from a subtler genetic architecture – common variants scattered throughout the population that, in certain combinations and under certain environmental conditions, can alter development.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnd while recent public discourse has been clouded by misinformation about the role vaccines play in autism, Tylenol and what factors cause the condition, the new analysis is gradually illuminating …
