Answer to autism could be in hormones

♦ A test and possible treatment for autism could be on the horizon after scientists discovered that people and primates who are less social are deficient in a particular hormone.

Around 695,000 people in Britain are thought to be on the autism spectrum. Doctors have struggled to accurately diagnose the condition, but now scientists at Stanford University – in research published in the journal Science Translational Medicine

– believe that measuring levels of the hormone arginine vasopressin (AVP) could be the answer. In tests on rhesus monkeys, they found that less social animals had levels of the hormone almost one third lower than their more gregarious peers. A similar deficiency was found in 14 autistic boys.