Diagnosis changes may affect autism rise

[flashl]

OXFORD, England, April 10 (UPI) -- British research supports the theory that the rise in autism may be due in part to changes in how it is diagnosed.

The study, published in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, revisited 38 adults under the age of 31 diagnosed with developmental language disorders as children who had attended special schools or classes for children with language impairments. The researchers found about one-quarter of them met current diagnostic criteria for autistic spectrum disorders.

"Our study shows pretty direct evidence to support the theory that changes in diagnosis may contribute towards the rise in autism," study leader Dorothy Bishop of the University of Oxford said in a statement. "These were children that people were saying were not autistic in the 1980s, but when we talk to their parents now about what they were like as children, it's clear that they would be classified as autistic now."

Bishop noted the criteria for diagnosing autism "were much more stringent in the 1980s than nowadays and a child wouldn't be classed as autistic unless he or she was very severe. Now, children are being identified who have more subtle characteristics and who could in the past easily have been missed."

UPI

[varkam]

1. K&R

[LeftishBrit]

2. k&r

[trotsky]

3. Strange how this obvious idea...

is so readily dismissed by those who want to believe vaccines cause autism.

[chicagomd]

4. The "epidemic" of autism is hearsay.

"The Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Prevalence of Autism in US Special Education" Paul T. Shattuck, PhD PEDIATRICS Vol. 117 No. 4 April 2006, pp. 1028-1037

CONCLUSIONS: Prevalence findings from special education data do not support the claim of an autism epidemic because the administrative prevalence figures for most states are well below epidemiological estimates. The growing administrative prevalence of autism from 1994 to 2003 was associated with corresponding declines in the usage of other diagnostic categories.

Autism rates went up, other diagnosis went down. An "administrative" epidemic.

But don't think for a second that is going to stop Kirby, et. al. from milking their 15 minutes of fame for all they can.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Yes, until very recently, only those who couldn't function at all in regular society

were labeled as autistic. The typical autistic child was a usually a boy, prone to repetitive motions, usually retarded, with a distinctive facial "look."

Then Asperger's syndrome was publicized in the media, maybe ten or fifteen years ago. When I first heard the description, I thought that it fit a lot of people I had known over the years. But we never thought of such people as "autistic." We thought of them as odd or eccentric or nerdy.

Recently, I've run into an awful lot of people who claim to have autistic children. But when I meet the children they don't strike me as being what would have been called autistic twenty or thirty years ago. They either have Asperger's or they appear to be hyperactive. I can recall meeting only one such child who would have been called autistic in times past.

[xchrom]

6. kick