New study shows autism more common than previously thought

[Hathor]

This article says autism is as common as 1 in 58.

Self trained Hathor. It became a question of survival really. I have few close friends and I really want a large friendly social circle for my very sociable dds.

Not as hard really to express empathy as it is to spot where it is required .

Originally it was v v hard not to just be bare bones logical - it gets easier with practise I suppose. Getting my arse kicked at work for it made me up my game. And that was in a department full of analysts. My brother is also an analyst.

an example might help here maybe

me) needs information to complete a task while at work. Person a has this info. sits at bank of desks over the other side of the room.

Person a is typing.

me - "what was the file for x?"
person a - looking startled - er um it was blah oh are you working on such and such

me - yes. Turns round and goes back to desk and carries on working.

I was pulled up on being blunt{no shit} looking blank and uninterested when people were holding a conversation with me(i.e. i had worked out what they wanted to know and had switched off waiting for them to get to the point and many similar stuff.

I am too competitive to let anything get in my way so I (god this sounds a bit mad) went round observing other people and worked out what I was doing differntly then put it into practice. Very analytical lol!

OK I've gone but worth recounting this:

My son attends a special shcool it's for the most disabled in the city (whatever category). children attend from 3-19, and parents tend to hang around once their adult children have moved on.

I was talking to a mum (now a govenor) whose daughter was at the school quite a while ago- she;s in her 40's, and she said "where on earth are all these autistic children coming from". She said when her daughter was at the school there were about 3 children with autism in the entire school, now the younger years (infants, juniors in particular) are full. DS1's class has 6 children in - all autistic- she said that was absolutely unheard of in her day.

These are not children that could have been missed (the children in ds1's class are all non verbal). There isn't anywhere else they could have gone. The local MLD school is has switched to ASD and is completely oversubscribed.

An excellent article was published in Novembr )(? end of last year anyway) 2006, in Gut journal (high quality) which gave a model to account for the increase in autoimmune conditons. It didn't mention autism, but it was the exact same model that we came up with for what happened to ds1, and is the reason we did certain things with ds2 and ds3- involves a leaky gut. DS3 has a leaky gut by the way, but we avoided potential triggers we identified and is fine.

It should concern everyone. The lifetime care cost for a child like ds1 is millions, he will require 1:1 care for the rest of his life. If numbers are increasing at the rate they appear to be that financial cost alone to society will affect all our children. Of course it will affect ds2 and ds3 more directly.

Gess - Hi!

I totally back the leaky gut thing. DD1 definitly did have seems to have sealed. Dd2 not sure but not taking any chances.

ProjectIcarus - that sounds amazingly insightful and difficult. I hope you are passing on that talent other adults on the autistic spectrum.

Gess - thanks that is interesting.

Does anyone know what the link between testosterone in the womb and autism is? I will go and google it see what it comes up with.

As far as I understand it, the foetus naturally produces testosterone in the womb (not sure if this includes girl babies), and if the levels are higher than average there is an increased chance of the child being autistic.
So this must also be genetic, yes?

Hathor - not alwyas succesful but I try. I once had a tremendously funny conversation with my Dh(has traits lol) about morning chat at work.

Dh came home ranting about people asking him if he had had a good weekend. He described how he tells them (in detail) about his weekend and whether he thought it was good or not, then carrys on working. He told me how annoying it was having to say all this stuff when he didn't even want to tell people it.

I then out of interest asked my aunt, my sister and my mother about similar convos and guess what? They all did the same thing. Twas a revelation to them (and a joy) to begin replying"yes my weekend was fine, how was yours?"

They use it like a script and I am sure all surrounding them are happier . (i used to do the same until I paid attention to what everyone else said lol).

Hathor -personally (and this is in my opinion) I think that is more relevant for AS/HFA. When you talk to people with HFA or AS, or with children with those conditions there often seems to be a link with previous generations. funny uncles with odd hobbys etc, grandfather who refuse to allow people in the house etc. The vast majority of research- has been carried out on HFA/AS.

When you look at severe autism the general picture changes. No autism in the family histrory but stacks of autoimmunity. Developing autism with no family histpry of autism or odd uncles seems to be a path to devastation.

VERY general, VERY VERY general. There are lots of pathways to autism, but I tend to think of those as 2 main routes.

Gut problems sometimes seem to cut across both types to an extent. Often goes with regressive autism as well.

DS1 regressed following eczema herpeticum, I forgot how awful it was, then found the photos the other day. He had other weird immune things happen right before his herpes infection (for a number of weeks a large mole he had went crinkly, 'keratinised' as a dermatologist we took him to noted, it then swelled up and leaked clear fluid - like a big leaky blister - it was very weird, drs were stumped then e herpeticum foillowed horrendously) Herpes viral infection is an 'accepted' trigger for autism (other viral infections are not ahem) but many models tie regression from viruses in with leaky guts and thimerosal damage previously. Which is our big suspicion. Chuck in gluten into the mix.....

BTW- I think ds1's autism is 'genetic' in respect of there being a predisposition (leaky gut/family history of autoimmunity), but I think developing normally ds2 & especailly ds3 (as we know he has a leaky gut) shows what happens when you avoid environmental triggers that interact with genetic predispositions.

{smile] LOL ProjectIcarus.
I also find that giving people a chance to talk about themselves means I don't have to recount my life to them. I do it coz I am generally more interested in other people and think I am not so interesting myself.

Gess - realised you are trying to write an essay. I only started this thread coz I was interested in the reported study. Thanks for your post. Work hard, play later .

Gess - you are writing so fast I can't keep up. Will read the posts again. It is very interesting and complicated.

essay? I wish- I have 18 000 words to write!

Gess, I'm absolutely not wanting to criticise your friend's observation but I have been in a situation where the opposite observation was made.

I once did a random job where part of it involved being on-call for LD psychiatry. I met lots of adults, especially those in late twenties/early thirties who were in patients on a LD specific psych unit, some had severe LD. Loads of them had the diagnosis of autism. I asked the consultant about it, ie when was diagnosis made, and for most of them it had been in the preceding 5 years, they had always been autistic but only received a diagnosis as adults.

More like a book then

How many had other conditions such as DS? The school used to be full of children with DS- very few with other LD's. It is more common for people with DS for example to get an autism diagnosis (ditto Frag X etc), but she wasn;t counting those. The children with DS & other chromosomal conditions have all disappeared (not so many born/more in mainstream) and replace by these completely autism (no dysmorphic features etc). I do agree that it is more common for LD's to go hand in hadnwith an autism dx, but these children are 'pure' autism if such a thing exists; 'very autistic' as his escorts put it.

Hathor- it's on autism so busman's holiday......

Plus - extra units/homes etc are being opened to cope with the numbers. Met someone from the Priory recently and he said that the numbers coming through now tghat require very high levels of care are so large now that new provision is having to be opened to care for them. His place cost 8 grand a month (it's where we would like ds1 to end up eventually, or somewhere like it). He said by the time ds1 reaches adulthood there will be a whole range of services of that type as its a necessity.

Ladidadi0 theorectially then it should be possible for LA' s to compare numbers dxed with autism in adult services with no's dxed with autism (say ASD not AS) in school and compare the two. As our local authority doesn't even know how many autistic children are in its schools I don't hold out much hope..... but the opportunity should be there!

I think that type of research is needed to se if rise ies real or true, plus perhaps "screening", prob not right word, of adult LD pts for autistic traits in the way that a child now might get "screened" by community paeds etc.

I worry about service provision for adults who are more mildly affected; are they more likely to suffer from depression or alcoholism as a result of their social isolation?

I find ASD very, very interesting and not just because I suspect that I've got some traits.

What's your essay on?

Not an essay! Research project on interactions of severely autistic children using conversation analysis (which is interesting as many of the participants are non verbal ) Very little done on the severely autistic end of the spectrum which is the bit I'm interested in.

ASD is fascinating! The NAS did a study on adults with AS recently- rather depressing reading; something hideous like only 2% living fully independently (although whether that refects current dxing).

Personally I think the numbers game should be analysed with other autoimmune conditions. I don't think its any accident that whilst there is no autism in our family at all (and we have a large extended family) there is MS and dh's nephew was dxed with type 1 diabetes aged 2. I searched and the mechanism for developing diabetes via leaky gut and gluten/casein exposure (lots of literacture on that) was like reading an autism article. Exactly the same model as we had for ds1- exactly the same.

Read this today with interest (and sadness) as am a salt working with many autistic people and yes,from my general observations,incidence is soaring.

Implications for providing proper highly specialised intervention at a very early age are huge (as opposed to the generally appalling and laughably entitled 'specialist' provision' that is currently on offer.)

Am biting my lip in anguish at present watching a very young child with severe autism (being deliberately vague here as am easily identifiable) in my community get dumped in a m/s school with the 'specialist' support consisiting of school general dogsbody for a few hours a week.

With PECS and ABA we could actually do something but parnets have been fooled into thinknig he is getting proper intervention.

Has Jimjams left if so. I read this too.

Gess - it must be mind blowingly anger-making/heartbreaking re: how your ds1 has come to be so severely affected. Knowing ds3 also has a leaky gut, does this mean you can't ever be sure of avoiding all the things which might bring autism on for him (or am I being too simplistic?)? Is there an age he'll get to where the chances are reduced, etc.?

Sorry - just thinking as I type and no need to answer my daft questions as I know those 18,000 words need writing!

Anyway, as ever your posts are thought provoking and insightful.

moondog. Sounds like us a few years ago. I do find it goes belly up pretty quickly though (by year 1) & once in special school things start to happen.

Do you think incidence is soaring from say end of juniors down to pre-school? Some of the autism lists I'm on have been giving frightening figures.

You see I think back to my (small) primary school and I can think of one- yep one boy who would have been diagnoised with ADHD now.

Yet in that one street (10 houses) there were 6 families with children. We have ds1, my old next door neighbour has a son with AS, 3 doors away has a son with AS/HFA/ADHD (bit of a syndrome mix). I'm not still in contact with everyone.

Dottydot-we avoided/delayed vaccination (not really because of the vaccination but because of the heavy metals that get added- ds1 had mercury which has gone but there's other 'stuff'), avoided antibiotics wherever possible (so ds3 has, like ds1 had repeated ear infections- ds1 had 8 rounds of antibs by the time he was 2, ds3 has had none). & probably tbh the biggest one we avoided gluten and when ds3's development was looking a bit ropey (aged 16 months) switched to goats milk- which was like the lights going on).

DS1's regression was complex and involved several steps, a case of bad timing for some of them. At least he's relatively placid. An autistic ds3 would have been hell on earth