Wondering, how many people have a genetic link to autism in their family. Personally for us, my husband has a first cousin who has Autism. My mother was bipolar as is my brother. I have been told that there is a genetic link between autism and bipolar but i don't have the medical information to support that. Also my brother in law is MR. My sister has a learning disability although I dont know what exactly. My other sister has ADHD. So for us we have strong genetic componants for Autism.

Talking with my grandmother and my great grandmother about the family history it seems like we may have had many undiagnosed members of my side of the family. the only one of which I personally knew was my aunt, who looking back i feel was with out a doubt aspegers. But growing up when she did she was called shy, weird, eccentric, odd and many other things, although she was very smart. I am dyslexic myself, and I have heard there could be a relationship between that as well. We also have a number of cases of bipolar in both sides of the family, so there is that possibly too.

My husbands cousin has a son with autism, but aside from that I think a few more in the family are undiagnosed aspegers!!!!

I believe everybody has a genetic predisposition. Go to an Autism conference and you can see the genetics walking around (ie some of the parents!)

We have bipolar disorder on my husband's side of the family, and I could swear that one of the members on my side of the family has Asperger's, but he's 73 years old, never diagnosed, maybe he's just reticent? Who knows. It's all such a puzzle.