A platform trial approach to proof-of-concept (POC) studies in autism spectrum disorder: Autism spectrum POC initiative (ASPI).

Background: Over the past decade, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research has blossomed, and multiple clinical trials have tested potential interventions, with varying results and no clear demonstration of efficacy. Lack of clarity concerning appropriate biological mechanisms to target and lack of sensitive, objective tools to identify subgroups and measure symptom changes have hampered the efforts to develop treatments. A platform trial for proof-of-concept studies in ASD could help address these issues.

Learning Scan Paths of Eye Movement in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Eye tracking studies have demonstrated deficits in attention in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) for a range of different social attention-based tasks. Here we examined social attention skills in a large sample of ASD participants (n = 120), using eye tracking data from a social information processing task, and compared them with a typically developing (TD) group (n = 35). Assuming eye movement parameters are random variables generated by an underlying stochastic process, we modeled the fixation sequences of participants in ASD and TD groups with a Hidden Markov Model.

Publisher Correction: ASPI: a public-private partnership to develop treatments for autism.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Caregiver Daily Reporting of Symptoms in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Observational Study Using Web and Mobile Apps.

Background: Currently, no medications are approved to treat core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One barrier to ASD medication development is the lack of validated outcome measures able to detect symptom change. Current ASD interventions are often evaluated using retrospective caregiver reports that describe general clinical presentation but often require recall of specific behaviors weeks after they occur, potentially reducing accuracy of the ratings.