What causes Childhood Apraxia of Speech?

For over 100 years, we had very poor evidence on the cause of developmental speech and language disorders, including for childhood apraxia of speech. In the last few years, our team have shown that childhood apraxia of speech arises from a genetic cause in 1 in 3 children. We have identified over 30 single genes or ‘monogenic’ conditions shown to cause CAS (e.g., FOXP2-related speech and language disorder; CDK13-related disorder; SETBP1- haploinsufficiency disorder). There are also a number of chromosomal level disruptions that can involve more than one gene which are also associated with CAS (e.g., 16p11.2 deletion; Koolen de Vries syndrome) (Eising et al., 2019; Hildebrand et al., 2020; Kaspi et al., 2022; Morgan et al., 2024). In a small number of cases, CAS is caused by a problem breaking down the simple sugar galactose (this condition is typically detected in the first months of life). In a very small number of cases, CAS is caused by damage to the brain from an injury or stroke, but this form of CAS is usually transient and not long-lasting, unlike idiopathic or genetic forms.

Learn more about our pharmaceutical trial for Childhood Apraxia of Speech.