Prevalence patterns: Autism prevalence in the United States is now 32.2 per 1,000 among 8-year-old children, an increase from past years, according to a report using the latest data from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. And more 4-year-old children are being identified as having suspected or diagnosed autism than in previous reports. These numbers, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, received much attention in the media last week, in part because they prompted speculation from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, about possible environmental causes. But the rise in cases follows a long-observed trend that may be attributed to increased awareness and access to screening and diagnostics. For instance, last November The Transmitter reported on a study of medical records that chronicled a rise in autism prevalence in several groups, including adults and non-white children, with researchers cautioning about inferring causality. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
More autism research we spotted:
- “Conceptualizing and describing autistic language: Moving on from ‘verbal’, ‘minimally verbal’ and ‘nonverbal’” Autism
- “Rare mutations implicate CGE interneurons as a vulnerable axis of cognitive deficits across psychiatric disorders” bioRxiv
- “Genomic dissection of sleep archetypes in a large autism cohort” medRxiv
