5 ms·

5 % is quite a lot of misdiagnosed babies if this is implemented as a mass screening activity, 2-3 times higher than than what the internet seems to think is t

by kpil 8y ago

5 % is quite a lot of misdiagnosed babies if this is implemented as a mass screening activity, 2-3 times higher than than what the internet seems to think is the actual ASD incidence, and I imagine that that number includes a lot of "highly functional" ASD cases What should a parent do when this happens? It will be only perhaps 20-30% risk that the baby actually do have ASD and not just a false positive. I imagine that ASD "prevention" is mostly behavioural training [I have no idea at all actually] - but how much time and effort would that take? What are the consequences for healthy babies? I imagine that most people would spend a lot of effort on anything that could help in cases like this. It's a bit problematic since it's not possible to know until after a couple of years if it's was a false positive or not. It might turn out that a lot (or most) of all successful recoveries was in fact "false positives".

jiggunjer 8y ago
What do you mean a false positive won't be detectable until a few years? I think by age 1 a parent will notice? Lack of eye contact, altered walking mechanism (foot dragging, tiptoes), non-responsiveness to voices, etc. So maybe a positive test means the kid gets more attention for a few months, that never hurt, right?
alexandercrohde 8y ago
What? 95% accuracy is outstanding. I see that you're saying if you said "No" for all babies, that'd be 95%, so that's a legitimate point. However, it sounds like it's better than that "We were also able to predict ASD severity, as indicated by the ADOS Calibrated Severity Score, with quite high reliability, also by 9 months of age." I imagine the intervention is ABA therapy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Efficacy_in_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Effi...) or similar, which is costly, but otherwise not a risk.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  >95% accuracy is outstanding 95% specificity and 95% sensitivity isn't good enough to test the general population. See why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16981888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16981888
dragonwriter 8y ago
> 5 % is quite a lot of misdiagnosed babies if this is implemented as a mass screening activity No, because “screening” and “diagnosis” aren't the same thing. It might be a lot of children identified for diagnostic follow-up that isn't strictly necessary, though, but that may not outweigh the early support and assistance for those who end up being correctly diagnosed earlier because of the screening.

by kpil 8y ago

jiggunjer 8y ago

What do you mean a false positive won't be detectable until a few years? I think by age 1 a parent will notice? Lack of eye contact, altered walking mechanism (foot dragging, tiptoes), non-responsiveness to voices, etc. So maybe a positive test means the kid gets more attention for a few months, that never hurt, right?

alexandercrohde 8y ago

What? 95% accuracy is outstanding. I see that you're saying if you said "No" for all babies, that'd be 95%, so that's a legitimate point. However, it sounds like it's better than that "We were also able to predict ASD severity, as indicated by the ADOS Calibrated Severity Score, with quite high reliability, also by 9 months of age." I imagine the intervention is ABA therapy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Efficacy_in_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_behavior_analysis#Effi...) or similar, which is costly, but otherwise not a risk.

DINKDINK 8y ago
>95% accuracy is outstanding 95% specificity and 95% sensitivity isn't good enough to test the general population. See why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16981888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16981888

dragonwriter 8y ago

> 5 % is quite a lot of misdiagnosed babies if this is implemented as a mass screening activity No, because “screening” and “diagnosis” aren't the same thing. It might be a lot of children identified for diagnostic follow-up that isn't strictly necessary, though, but that may not outweigh the early support and assistance for those who end up being correctly diagnosed earlier because of the screening.