A new study suggest that skyrocketing autism rates have more to do with the diagnosis than the condition.
It's all your fault!(stock photo)
If you follow medical news (or news at all), you're probably aware that autism rates are skyrocketing in the US. The neurological disorder, which many people hadn't heard of 20 years ago, is now diagnosed in 1 in 68 children. That's a startling 30% increase from 2012, when 1 in 88 children were diagnosed. These numbers are definitely scary, especially for any prospective parent, but there may be a less apocalyptic explanation.
A new study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics suggests that the reason more children are being diagnosed with autism is just that doctors are more likely to diagnose it.
The study, titled "Comorbidity of intellectual disability confounds ascertainment of autism: Implications for genetic diagnosis," found that as many as two thirds of new autism diagnoses would previously have been classified as different conditions. Among older kids, that proportion rises to 97%. In other words: more kids have autism than before, but not nearly as many as we thought.
The Penn State researchers who conducted the study looked at 11 years of special education enrollment data and found that the increase in the number of autistic children could almost perfectly be offset by a decrease in students diagnosed with other learning disabilities. Santhosh Giririjan, one of the authors of the study, said in a statement:
"For quite some time, researchers have been struggling to sort disorders into categories based on observable clinical features, but it gets complicated with autism because every individual can show a different combination of features. The tricky part is how to deal with individuals who have multiple diagnoses because, the set of features that define autism is commonly found in individuals with other cognitive or neurological deficits."
It's difficult for doctors to diagnose autism because its symptoms vary so widely between patients. Some are high-functioning, whereas others are severely impaired, even nonverbal. And as doctors learn more and more about this mysterious condition, they're realizing that many different disorders actually fall under the umbrella of the autism spectrum.
"Everything I learned in medical school is wrong. Whoops."(stock photo)
Even Asperger syndrome (still popular as a way to make fun of your awkward coworkers) is no longer considered its own disorder. Recent diagnostic guidelines for doctors have eliminated it entirely. These days, those patients are just diagnosed as high-functioning autistic. So tell that to the wiseasses in your office next time they make fun of you for eating at your desk.
The Penn State study, while very interesting, is not conclusive. More research and peer review needs to be done to verify the researchers' claims. But it should come as tentatively good news to everyone. While autism is still a real challenge faced by families and doctors the world over, there probably isn't some medical boogeyman spreading it around at epidemic levels. We're just learning more about it, and that can only help.