查看文章

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects 1 in 59 children, yet except for rare genetic causes, the etiology in most ASD remains unknown. In the ASD brain, inflammatory cytokine and transcript profiling shows increased expression of genes encoding mediators of the innate immune response. We evaluated postmortem brain tissue for adaptive immune cells and immune cell–mediated cytotoxic damage that could drive this innate immune response in the ASD brain.

Standard neuropathology diagnostic methods including histology and immunohistochemistry were extended with automated image segmentation to quantify identified pathologic features in the postmortem brains.

We report multifocal perivascular lymphocytic cuffs contain increased numbers of lymphocytes in ~65% of ASD compared to control brains in males and females, across all ages, in most brain regions, and in white …