**Author details**

M. Catherine DeSoto and Robert T. Hitlan

University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, USA

## **References**


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**Chapter 7**

**Pro-Inflammatory Phenotype Induced by**

Nicholas M. Ponzio, Mili Mandal, Stella Elkabes, Pan Zhang, Junichi Sadoshima, Sayantani Basak,

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Peiyong Zhai and Robert Donnelly

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53990

ported in children with ASD [6-11].

**1. Introduction**

**Maternal Immune Stimulation During Pregnancy**

There is consensus among investigators studying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) that the etiological basis involves environmental factors acting on the genetic susceptibility of the individual [1-5]. Over 100 candidate genes that may contribute to ASD susceptibility have been identified, and numerous environmental "triggers" have been suggested. Yet, the cause of ASD eludes clear definition and most likely is, as in most diseases, multi-factorial. However, several common immunological themes emerge from clinical and experimental studies of ASD, including persistent neuroinflammation, immune dysregulation, or autoim‐ mune manifestations in many autistic children. Thus, in addition to genetic and environ‐ mental factors, there is compelling evidence that immune factors also play a role in ASD. Abnormalities consistent with immune dysregulation, including abnormal or skewed T helper (Th) cell subsets and cytokine profiles, decreased lymphocyte numbers, decreased T cell mitogen responses, and an imbalance of serum immunoglobulin levels have been re‐

Recent results of transcriptomic analysis of autistic brains [5] provides strong evidence sup‐ porting a gene-environment etiology for ASD. These authors demonstrated consistent differ‐ ences in transcriptome organization in the cerebral cortex of autistic and normal brains, and identified two discrete modules of co-expressed genes associated with autism. The first, a neuronal module of 209 genes, was enriched for known autism susceptibility genes, and the second module of 235 genes was enriched for immune genes and glial markers. Gene enrich‐ ment analysis showed that genes in the neuronal module were downregulated and enriched

> © 2013 Ponzio et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
