Hicks SD, et al. - Researchers examined if children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could be differentiated from peers with typical development (TD) and non-autism developmental delay (DD) via salivary microRNAs, as well as microRNA patterns among ASD phenotypes. In this multicenter, prospective, case-control study of 443 children (2-6 years old), ASD, TD, and DD groups displayed differential expression (false discovery rate < 0.05) among 14 microRNAs. In training and validation sets, a panel of four microRNAs (controlling for medical/demographic covariates) was identified as best for differentiating children with ASD from children without ASD (controlling for medical/demographic covariates). They observed a correlation between eight microRNAs and social affect, and between 10 microRNAs and restricted/repetitive behavior. For identifying ASD-status, salivary microRNA collection is noninvasive with moderate accuracy. Improvement in accuracy could be achieved with a multi-“omic” approach using additional RNA families, leading to clinical application.