[djhope99]

My 8 yr old identical twin daughter’s have severe autism but one is definitely worse than the other, one of them can use some words but the other is completely unable to communicate.

I have absolutely no explanation for this, I cannot think of anything different that happened to them. They didn’t have antibiotics or surgery at a young age like in this story either.

[burnte]

There's genetics, but then there's gene expression which is affected by the world, so they clearly grew differently.

[djhope99]

Thank you this is helpful. The genetic part makes sense to me, my wife has PCOS and they have a history of ovarian problems in their family. There are studies linking PCOS and autism and to high levels of testosterone.

The mystery to me was why they are so different.

[mikebrave]

It was my understanding that Autism was more or less that the neurons in the brain expanded further than they could support and the parts that weren't supported atrophied, kinda like a tree that overgrew, think what happens to a fruit tree that isn't pruned. Everyone's brain does some growth and pruning as needed, but something happens with autism that more or less it goes too far and then the parts that atrophy are less controlled than an average brain. This is why savants etc.

This process could express completely different in people that were more or less the same genetically, just one day in a womb where they got different amounts of nutrition could cause differences to manifest, then a lifetime of small differences would further manifest differently.

[resoluteteeth]

One theory about autism is that it's caused by some sort of problem in synaptic pruning early in development. I don't think there's actually that much evidence for this theory, but if it is in fact caused by something like that, there could perhaps be a high degree of randomness in terms of how it affects different areas of the brain.

[tail_exchange]

As a word of caution to the readers: the Children's Health Defense is a group known for antivax, water fluoridation, and 5g disinformation.