CDC: Rise in Autism Prevalence

The number of autism cases in the United States appeared to jump dramatically in 2014 according to new estimates released Friday, but researchers said that changes in the format of the questionnaire likely affected the numbers.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Center for Health Statistics shows that the prevalence of autism in children ages 3 to 17 went up nearly 80 percent from 2011-2013 to 2014. Instead of 1 in 68 children having autism – a number that has alarmed public health officials in recent years and strained state and school system resources — researchers now estimate that the prevalence is now 1 in 45.

Editorial: Troubling Statistics in NJ as Autism Awareness Month Begins

As Autism Awareness Month begins today, new information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitively show the issue merits much more attention. The rate has more than doubled since a 2002 CDC survey.

As Kathleen O’Brien reported last week in The Star-Ledger, one in 68 children is
now diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder nationally — with boys nearly five times more likely than girls to have autism.

In New Jersey, it’s estimated that one in 48 children — and one in 28 boys — has autism.

CDC: 1 in 68 Children in U.S. Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder

One in 68 children in the United States have now been identified with an autism spectrum disorder, according to new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers released Thursday.

The latest estimate is roughly 30 percent higher than the CDC's previous measure, released in 2012, which found that 1 in 88 children had autism, based on health and education records.

Study: Air Pollution Linked to Autism

Pregnant women who were exposed to high levels of air pollution were twice as likely to have a child with autism as women who lived in low pollution areas, a Harvard University study said on Tuesday.

According to researchers, this is the first large national study to examine links between the prevalence of pollution and the development of the developmental disorder.

Folic Acid Linked to Lower Autism Risk

Women who took folic acid supplements before and during pregnancy were about 40% less likely to have a baby later diagnosed with autism, according to a provocative new study generating high interest in the scientifc community.

Report Sees Less Impact in New Autism Definition

Proposed changes to the official diagnosis of autism will not reduce the proportion of children found to have it as steeply as many have feared, scientists reported on Tuesday, in an analysis that contradicts several previous studies.

Earlier research had estimated that 45 percent or more of children currently on the “autism spectrum” would not qualify under a new definition now being refined by psychiatric researchers — a finding that generated widespread anxiety among parents who rely on state-financed services for their children. The new report, posted online Tuesday by The American Journal of Psychiatry, concluded that the number who would be excluded is closer to 10 percent.

Relating to Children on the Spectrum

According to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one child in 88 has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That’s a 23-percent increase since the organization’s last report in 2009. That ratio is even higher in New Jersey, which reported one child in 49 diagnosed with an ASD.

In spite of his autism spectrum disorder, Daniel Stefanski wrote 'How to Talk to an Autistic Kid' at the age of 14.

While it may seem like an epidemic is underway, the CDC attributes a lot of this increase to improvements in identifying, diagnosing, and treating children with ASDs. It has absolutely nothing to do with vaccines, according to the Institute of Medicine, and the CDC agrees.
Some experts believe that New Jersey ranks so high simply because its medical and educational personnel are particularly adept at identification and diagnosis—and because parents in New Jersey are more aware of ASDs as well.

Opinion: Time to Re-Engage on Autism Epidemic

From The Hill blog, an item by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), who has chaired the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform from 1997-2002.

On March 30, 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released their latest figures on the number of autistic kids in America. The numbers are sobering. Thirty years ago it was estimated that autism affected only 1 out of every 10,000 individuals. The latest CDC figures put the number at 1 in 88 American children (one in 54 boys); a 550 percent jump in cases since 2000. We are literally in the midst of a nationwide epidemic.

Discovering Autism: Unraveling an Epidemic

First of a four-part series in The Los Angeles Times.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 1% of children across the country have some form of autism — 20 times the prevailing figure in the 1980s. The increase has stirred fears of an epidemic and mobilized researchers to figure out what causes the brain disorder and why it appears to be affecting so many more children.
Two decades into the boom, however, the balance of evidence suggests that it is more a surge in diagnosis than in disease.
Factors that have nothing to do with biology can explain much of the steep increase in cases around the world: an expanded definition of autism, spreading awareness of the disorder and an improved ability to distinguish it from other conditions.

Autism Rate Among Latinos Rises

The gap in the rate of autism between white and Hispanic children is narrowing, according to a study.
The prevalence of autism among white children in the U.S. is 1 in 100, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But among Hispanics it is 1 in 170. In the study, researchers examined nearly 400,000 birth records and data from early-intervention programs taken from 2001 to 2005 in Massachusetts.
According to the data from 2001, white children had the highest rate of autism, 90 percent higher than Hispanic children. By 2005, there was virtually no difference.
Experts say it’s because of the improved ability to diagnose the disorder.

Massachusetts Finds Sharp Rise in Autism

More children aged 3 and younger are now being treated for autism in Massachusetts, a new study finds.
One in 129 children in Massachusetts born between 2001 and 2005 was enrolled in early intervention programs for an autism spectrum disorder by their third birthday, according to the study.
Over the five-year period, the proportion of children aged 3 and younger getting treated rose from one in 178 among children born in 2001 to one in 108 for those born in 2005 -- a 66 percent increase.
Much of the increase in diagnosis occurred among boys, which increased by 72 percent from 2001 to 2005, compared to about 39 percent among girls, the investigators found.
The study authors said they aren't sure if the reason for the rise is because greater awareness and better availability of services means kids are getting diagnosed and into treatment sooner, or if autism itself is becoming more common.

S. Korea Study Reveals High Autism Rate

An ambitious six-year effort to gauge the rate of childhood autism in a middle-class South Korean city has yielded a figure that stunned experts and is likely to influence the way the disorder’s prevalence is measured around the world, scientists reported on Monday.
The figure, 2.6 percent of all children aged 7 to 12 in the Ilsan district of the city of Goyang, is more than twice the rate usually reported in the developed world. Even that rate, about 1 percent, has been climbing rapidly in recent years — from 0.6 percent in the United States in 2007, for example.
But experts said the findings did not mean that the actual numbers of children with autism were rising, simply that the study was more comprehensive than previous ones.
"This is a very impressive study," said Lisa Croen, director of the autism research program at Kaiser-Permanente Northern California, who was not connected with the new report. "They did a careful job and in a part of the world where autism has not been well documented in the past."

CDC Study Expected to Show Autism Rate at 1 in 100

With the latest autism rate figures due out tomorrow from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network and the Centers for Disease Control, thought this piece from Age of Autism would be of interest. Like to hear your thoughts.

ATLANTA - Researchers report that autism has risen to an epidemic rate of 1 in 100 children in a study to be released on Friday by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network office of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). This rate represents a 50% increase between the two birth cohort years of 1994 and 1996 and mirrors a recent study released by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which found a rate of 1 in 91 children, 1 in 58 boys.
In 2007, the ADDM released a similar study conducted in 2002 examining children born in 1994 that found the autism rate to be 1 in 150. In the study to be released Friday, the CDC looked at children born in 1996 (8 years old in 2004) and determined that there was a substantial increase of 50% between those two birth years.
This study and other recently published research clearly indicate that autism cannot solely be caused by genetic differences because it is impossible for genetic diseases to increase at such astronomical rates. It also cannot be explained by better diagnosing, changes in diagnostic criteria or migration patterns. It is clearly triggered by the environment. It’s well past time that CDC and NIH treat the autism epidemic with the national emergency status it deserves and act with crisis level response.

Autism: What to Make of the New Data

For years the autism community's most powerful public-relations weapon has been a striking statistic: an estimated 1 in 150 children have the diagnosis. Now it appears that estimate is actually too small. According to two new studies, the number of kids diagnosed with autism or a related disorder in the U.S. is closer to 1in 100.
The new data has everyone who cares about autism abuzz. But, as with so many issues connected to the disorder, no one can quite agree on what it means.