Sex-dependent prediction of autism.

Sex-specific genetic factors influence autism prediction accuracy, with common variants more predictive in males (69%) than females (66%), highlighting biological differences.

• Why it matters: Understanding how biological sex impacts ASD prediction is crucial for developing accurate, personalized diagnostic tools and improving early intervention strategies.
• What they did: An ensemble model integrating polygenic risk scores, genetic variants, and risk genes was trained on the MSSNG dataset, achieving 68% accuracy and 0.72 AUROC.
• The result: Findings reveal sex-dependent genetic contributions, with distinct brain regions implicated in ASD risk for males and females, emphasizing the importance of incorporating sex into predictive models.