Sci. Transl. Med. 10, eaam9100 (2018).

Modeling disorders characterized by social impairments, like autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a tricky task in animals that don’t share many social behaviors with humans. Nonhuman primates often make better models than rodents, given their cognitive abilities and sociality. Among rhesus macaques, there can be extremes in social functioning within a group; new research uses these differences to identify a potential biomarker with translational relevance.

From legacy ethological data of male macaques housed at the California National Primate Research Center, the researchers sorted out a sample of extreme low-social animals from high; once validated, they tested cerebral spinal fluid for differences in several signaling molecules and pathways between animals in the two groups. One hormone in particular, arginine vasopressin (AVP), proved predictive. In an independent cohort of macaques and a small clinical sample, low levels of AVP were recorded in low-social macaques and male children with ASD.