The tools to design are being crafted faster than anyone could imagine.

New research has linked high levels of testosterone in amniotic fluid, the liquid the bathes the fetus, to autism.

Sarah Boseley, health editor at the Guardian, said how it could be used as a pre-natal test for autism in an interview today.

It’s well worth 2:38 of your time. Boseley also squeezes in a few interesting subtleties that could be missed by such a test.

The Pleiades Promoter Project is based at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics in Vancouver.

I had the chance to speak to Beth about the project. Have a listen or download the first Science Perspectives podcast:

There’s something about the first few years of life. What happens in those years seems to have a big effect on the development of asthma.

Maybe it’s the crib the baby slept in. Maybe it’s the exposure it had to animals. Maybe it’s the interaction of these environments with a baby’s genetic make-up. We just don’t know.

Dr. Malcom R. Sears, professor of medicine at McMaster University, is leading a study that looks at how genes and the environment affect the development of asthma in childhood. His research project, the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study, will follow 5,000 children from when they’re inside the womb to their fifth birthday.

Dr. Sears’ hypothesis is that a child’s environment will affect how well their lungs work as adults.

But he doesn’t discount the role gene

s play in the development of asthma.  He said it’s likely that certain children are born with small airways, and that’s why they develop asthma.

Dr. Sears hopes to capture and study some of the elements that make up a child’s early environment.

He’s taking the unusual step of bringing a vaccum into a newborn’s home. When a baby is three months old, his team will vaccum the child’s bed to collect dust. The dust will be analysed for things that could be linked to asthma.

Dr. Sears will also be measuring other things, like stress and socioeconomic status, that could affect disease development. He will look at how the materials and heating system used in a house could, in some way,  contribute to a child’s development of asthma.

When asked when we could expect to see some results, Dr. Sears said he would certainly publish significant findings as soon as they were available.

But we might have to wait a few years.

Dr. Sears’s research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the AllerGen Network of Centres of Excellence.

Photo curtesy of RogelSM

Who says you can’t write poetry about science?

We’d like to solicit more from the audience: Haikus? Limericks? A ballad or two?

Peter and Paul are Pre-diseased
Two little boomers there, sitting on a wall:
Pre-Hypertension Peter, Pre-Diabetes Paul.
Of course, the two aren’t really sick, it hasn’t come to that,
but as the two get older, something’s sure to lay them flat.
So they go in for their frequent tests, to have pokes and scans and measures.
They’re doing it to preserve their health, despite the small displeasures.
They feel that they’re now taking care, and standing on their guard.
When your body is just pre-diseased, it isn’t all that hard.
Besides, they say, it’s all a road paved with good intentions,
but an ounce or yes, a pound of cure is worth billions in preventions.

(From Cassels’ latest work The ABCs of Disease Mongering, available December 3, 2007)

Check out Alan Cassels project Media Doctor, a website that tries to improve medical news reporting.