Autism Studies Presented at Mid-Atlantic Research Consorti...( PHILADELPHIA May 8 -- Science is lar...),Health

PHILADELPHIA, May 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Science is largely a collaborative enterprise. Frequently researchers from various disciplines but with some common interests pool their efforts and exchange ideas, to devise new avenues of investigation. When unraveling complex conditions such as those known as autism spectrum disorders, researchers from different centers also benefit by drawing on diverse populations of patients, finding a broader pool of information than even a large facility can provide.

Such collaboration is the rationale for the Mid-Atlantic Research Consortium (MAC) of the federally sponsored Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers (IDDRC). The consortium met on April 27 to focus on autism studies. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia hosted the full-day research symposium, which brought together scientists from centers in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.

The research centers have a history of cooperation with one another going back 25 to 30 years, said the symposium's moderator, Marc Yudkoff, M.D., director of the IDDRC at Children's Hospital, and a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

CHOP and Penn, along with Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the Kennedy Krieger Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, comprise the Mid-Atlantic Research Consortium. All four institutions have centers created and funded by the National Institutes of Health, committed to researching causes and treatments of developmental disabilities and mental retardation. "The goal of all our centers, both at CHOP and throughout the country, is to improve both diagnoses and outcomes for people with developmental disabilities," said Yudkoff, who is chief of Child Development, Rehabilitation and Metabolic Disease at Children's Hospital.

The consortium made autism spectrum di
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