Heritability of autism spectrum disorders: a meta‐analysis of twin studies

The etiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been recently debated due to emerging findings on the importance of shared environmental influences. However, two recent twin studies do not support this and instead re-affirm strong genetic effects on the liability to ASD, a finding consistent with previous reports. This study conducts a systematic review and meta-analysis of all twin studies of ASD published to date and explores the etiology along the continuum of a quantitative measure of ASD.

A PubMed Central, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge structured search conducted online, to identify all twin studies on ASD published to date. Thirteen primary twin studies were identified, seven were included in the meta-analysis by meeting Systematic Recruitment criterion; correction for selection and ascertainment strategies, and applied prevalences were assessed for these studies. In addition, a quantile DF extremes analysis was carried out on Childhood Autism Spectrum Test scores measured in a population sample of 6,413 twin pairs including affected twins.