Cerebrospinal fluid and the early brain development of autism.

The identification of early CSF abnormalities in children with ASD, along with emerging knowledge of the underlying pathogenic mechanisms, has the potential to serve as early stratification biomarkers that separate children with ASD into biological subtypes that share a common pathophysiology. Such subtypes could help parse the phenotypic heterogeneity of ASD and map on to targeted, biologically based treatments.