What are the CHARGE and MARBLES projects?
These are two new projects being undertaken by the Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the University of California Davis. Childhood Autism Risks From Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE), the first and largest case-control study of autism, will look at the influence of environmental factors, the role of genetic susceptibility and the interplay between the two. Markers for Autism Risk in Babies Early Learning Signs (MARBLES) will study women who have a child diagnosed with autism and who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant in the near future to find out if anything that occurs during pregnancy can be associated with a later diagnosis of autism (see The UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute: Uniquely Designed to Study Gene-environmental Interactions in Autism by Robert Hendren, D.O.).
