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1 in 68 children on autism spectrum, says US CDC
- artursapek 10y agohttps://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/449525268529815552 https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/44952526852981555...
- notahacker 10y agoone can only hope you're not posting that approvingly...
- akhilcacharya 10y agoWell I certainly don't approve.
- baq 10y agoholy shit i didn't see that.
- BooneJS 10y agoThis president is simply presenting alternative facts.
- johnnyg 10y agoPrematurity is linked to developmental delay and is suspected to be correlated with more pronounced Autism spectrum attributes. I wonder, in addition to the likely chemical sources, how many more children born early are saved than were in previous decades, and how they may be contributing to this rise. I know that Surfactant has been around for decades now and I suspect but don't have data that it was the last truly game changing upgrade to NICUs. The CDC has said with this data "this is up". I think the data is out there to also give a range of reasons and a likelihood for each. On a personal note, if you suspect your child may be at risk for Autism, early therapy is available and effective. Get it, get it now, get as much of it for your child as you can. My contact info is in my profile and I am happy to point you to the data and assistance.
- paulddraper 10y agoMultiple studies link parental age to autism. Teenage mothers, and to a much greater extent older parents (especially fathers) have a higher chance of autistic children. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/10/413205921/more-evidence-that-parents-ages-could-influence-autism-risk http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/10/41320592... https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/study-ties-dad%E2%80%99s-age-risk-autism-other-mental-disorders-kids https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/study-ties... https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/large-study-parent-age-autism-finds-increased-risk-teen-moms https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/large-stud... It doesn't seem to be enough to account for the whole difference, but given the increasing parental age at birth, it's an appealing theory. Lots of developmental disorders, e.g. Down's syndrom, have already been linked to older parents. I know "45 is the new 25" is popular, but biology is harder to convince.
- DenisM 10y agoPerhaps autistic fathers are taking more time to find a mate, and they also pass on their genes.
- paulddraper 10y agoPlausible. Maybe autistic potential fathers find more acceptance in today's nerd culture, and have the opportunity to pass on autistic genes :) Early studies showed autism as 90% generic, but more recent ones put it much lower.
- loeg 10y agoThat wouldn't explain why the rate is increasing, unless these autistic fathers are having higher than average children despite starting at a higher age.
- nkrumm 10y agoThe underlying biology of spermatogenesis is also involved. As males age, the germ cells (~stem cells) that produce sperm are continuously dividing. One of the daughter cells from the division becomes sperm, the other continues on as a germ cell [0]. Over time and with aging, the germ cells accumulate new mutations (primarily single nucleotide changes), which are then also passed on in the newly created sperm. While it is also possible that a mother's eggs carries a new mutation, these do not increase in frequency with aging because her eggs are created in utero and do not undergo the lifetime of regeneration that the father's sperm do. These "de novo" mutations can sometimes affect or "break" genes important for normal development, thus resulting in autism. They can be studied by sequencing father/mother/child families and comparing the genetic sequence of each. The de novo mutations show up in the child only. We can differentiate if they arose in the father's sperm or the mother's eggs by examining the "haplotype" around each of these mutations (basically, looking for other nearby mutations that were inherited by the child from either mom or dad). For more on this, see this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22495309 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22495309 [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatogenesis#/media/File:Spermatocytogenesis.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatogenesis#/media/File:Sp...
- sjg007 10y agoThis is a major public health crisis and there's not enough being done to help these kids. Where treatment is available there are long waitlists. Also ABA therapy is a huge growth industry. I encourage everyone to get involved. I worry greatly that the repeal of the ACA will doom many of these children in many states.
- orik 10y agoAutistic individuals don't need treatment, they need accommodation from society. (in my opinion, as an autist)
- zzalpha 10y agoI think it unreasonable for you to claim to speak for everyone on the spectrum. Is what you say true for some? Sure. But there are many far more severely impaired who desperately need better support systems, as do their caregivers.
- jrowley 10y agoEspecially considering there are some many that are unable to speak themselves.
- nsgi 10y ago(S)he has more right to speak for us than the majority of (neurotypical) decision makers.
- AnkhMorporkian 10y agoOnly for those on the lighter edge of the spectrum. I have a severely autistic sister who requires constant care and could never be functional in society. I feel I have more right to speak for her than the OP does. The neurotypical or neuroatypical decision makers argument doesn't really play when the individuals we're discussing lack the ability to make decisions in their own best interests.
- drc0 10y agothe increase in prevalence here [0] is due to more accurate identification ? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/addmnetworkprevalence2016.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/addmnetworkprevalen...
- arcanus 10y agoAnd at what point does this become an overdiagnosis, versus an increase in prevalence? I'm by no means suggesting that autism can be an extremely serious disorder. The question is if these numbers represent an increase in serious cases.
- cLeEOGPw 10y agoAlso autism is not a binary diagnosis. It is a gradient of symptoms, and saying that kid is autistic doesn't say much about his condition.
- anigbrowl 10y agoWhy not go and research that for yourself? I don't wish to be uncivil but I've heard this question so often for the last 20 years that I now regard it as little more than concern trolling. I get it, it's hard to make meaningful quantitative statements about a behavioral disease whose clinical parameters are hard to define. But it's a naive point and this subject has been a topic of public debate for a long time now, so the skeptical signalling gets really tedious after a while. It's about as enjoyable as if I described your work as a computational scientist as 'pushing buttons all day' or made some crack about it being an excuse to play video games, as a way of signaling a lack of regard for nerdy pursuits.
- clarkevans 10y agoThere is an inspiring TED talk, "A new way to diagnose autism" (2012) on early diagnosis using eye tracking by Ami Klin of the Marcus Autism Center: https://www.ted.com/speakers/ami_klin https://www.ted.com/speakers/ami_klin Early diagnosis is critical for treatment and helping the affected child and their family. The linked CDC site says average age of diagnosis is 4 years of age, which is shown to be more expensive for society as a whole. We have reliable ways to diagnose by 2 years now (and eye tracking could lower this perhaps to 9 months or earlier). Early diagnosis should be standard of care.
- Havoc 10y ago"on spectrum" is a pretty loose definition though. I bet a decent chunk of the hn crowd could be made to fit onto the extra-mild side of the spectrum if one tries (myself included). That's not meant to trivialise a real problem...point is the cut-off point is decidedly vague so stats like these are dicey at best.
- IshKebab 10y agoYeah isn't the whole point of a spectrum that everyone is on it?
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoI remember reading about how some scientists think everyone is technically on this spectrum (I mean, outside of the obvious "it's a spectrum so everyone is technically on it"). Ultimately it means the brain is far more complex than our attempts at bucketing disorders. I'm very curious to see where this takes us. Does the spectrum just continue getting wider? Do we start finding more specific disorders and classifying those individually instead?
- sjg007 10y agoThis is not true. There are specific indicators that are very well established.
- Havoc 10y agoEven indicators are a spectrum.
- saycheese 10y agoIt would really interested in seeing a heat map of the "counts of autism by zip code" overlaid with another heat map showing "counts of autism by zip code as a percentage of the population" - since it might show areas that are over and under reporting.
- a_thro_away 10y agoYeah! So lets pull from everyone basic, guaranteed health insurance, because every 1 in 68 persons should be able to generate a buck, somehow. And the other 27% of US population that has an existing condition too. Double good if a child, let's bill their parents for decades under a high risk pool until they too are broke and wards of the state. Let the downvotes rip, myopic people who can't understand a dollar is an imaginary thing, subject to whatever society says it is worth - not the other way around.
- xherberta 10y agoVaccines are life-saving and necessary. There is no evidence linking them to autism. But, WHY do children in the US need nearly 4x as many doses by age two as compared with children in Germany and Finland? Since childhood diseases aren't problematic in those countries, you'd think we could get similar results with a streamlined schedule that looks more like Europe's. Edit: thanks for the data. European schedules have changed since I knew them.
- dpark 10y agoI don't know. Why do people make these sorts of fear-mongering claims with no supporting data? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy#/media/File:US_Vaccination_Schedule.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy#/media/File... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy#/media/File:Germany_Vaccination_Schedule.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy#/media/File... From what I can tell, this claim is simply false. The biggest difference in German vs US vaccination seems to be the lack of recommended flu vaccination in Germany. Plus rotavirus, which is perhaps less prevalent in Germany?
- nkrumm 10y agoThe US does vaccinate more than other countries, but it is not 4-fold higher. See this very interesting infographic: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h5966/infographic http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h5966/infographic By age 6, the standard vaccine schedule would result in 49 vaccinations in the US, 44 in Germany.
- labster 10y agoTechnically aren't 68 out of 68 children on the spectrum? The point of a spectrum is that it includes all values.
- blablabla123 10y agoHaha yes... I was also wondering what the article (or the headline) is actually stating. In that light it's also very questionable to assume that "people on that spectrum" create cost - even if you limit it to some range that makes intuitively sense.
- anotherevan 10y agoAnd it’s observations like that that someone on the spectrum would make. Perhaps we could agree that “on the spectrum” in this case is a messy neurotypical shorthand for being on the colourful end of the spectrum (autistic) rather than the grey boring end (non-autistic).
- Nomentatus 10y agoNo, the spectrum is from severe autism through and including the old asperger's syndrome, however mild; it ends there definitionally, leaving the vast majority of humans outside the spectrum.
- nl 10y agoThe definition of autism has changed significantly over time[1] and many studies[2] show this is correlated with the rate increased. As it happens autism diagnosis is first possible around the same time as certain vaccines are given[3]. [1] http://www.unstrange.com/dsm1.html http://www.unstrange.com/dsm1.html [2] eg http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/01/05/majority-of-autism-increase-due-to-diagnostic-changes-finds-new-study/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/01/05/majority-o... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
- sjg007 10y agoThey've actually found that you can diagnose autism in even younger children e.g under a year. Way before vaccines are given. However such screening has not yet become widespread. I think an AI program could help screen here.
- mgamache 10y agoSome vaccines are given at birth at many others by two months and still others at 4 months (in the US). I am not aware of any test that can work that early. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...
- pasbesoin 10y agoHere is a simple appeal. By some definitions, I may fall somewhere on this spectrum. I have always done very good work. But I need peace and quiet -- a distraction-free environment -- to think for myself. I'm also capable of interacting well with people and need some significant degree of it. But under my control. The world, however, has continually insisted I conform (mightily, and exhaustingly, and stressfully) to its generalized, undifferentiated, trend-influenced, and -- observing those around me -- not terribly effective model of "randomly and noisily shoved together". As I say, some amount of random, or at least different, and serendipity is very beneficial. But -- whatever the cause -- please just acknowledge what works for me. Which I've figured out despite all the messaging, enculturation, and external pressure to the contrary. Just let me be. And let me work effectively. Give me a little quiet space in which to do so. It's not like society can't afford it (certainly not, here in the U.S.). Causes, causes, causes... Stop for a second, and just deal with the reality at hand. Everyone will end up happier, and more productive.
- nnyms2 10y agoThere was a recent post about lack of Vitamin D. Link to my comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13210531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13210531
- AstralStorm 10y agoYes, it could be that, or some environmental factor such as a material used in buildings now more than ever. Epidemiologists will have some trouble sorting this out though. And afterwards, interventional studies have to be ran.