Why is ASD so prevalent now?

[needmorecoffee]

This was soemthign I was pondering the other day. When I was a child hardly enough had ASD. Some kids were considered 'odd' or geeky maybe. But now ASD/ADD/dyspraxia etc etc seem to be very common (or else I hang on on too many SN boards!)
Either it was always there and kids didn't get dx so werea bit odd but were forced to cope or something has made a huge rise in ASD type things. Maybe vaccines, maybe pollutants in food and water and the air?
What do people think? I'd never heard of ASD until my 2nd child was dx with Aspergers. I just thought he was over-sensitive and 'difficult'. That was 10 years ago. He's unvaccinated but had the Vit K injection against my wishes as I was still unconscious after his c-section. But I still wonder what might have caused it.

I'm one of those people who slipped through the net when I was younger. I nearly didn't, I was picked up on being different, with suggestions that I be assessed by paediatricians, teachers and my dad (my mum says now she knew I was different, but she didn't want me labelled). I can think of a couple of others in my year at secondary school who also probably would have been diagnosed with something.
The thing I have noticed when looking on ASD forums (my older son is autistic) is that the majority of children on them over the age of 6 are what would be termed high functioning. This does not mean they have no problems, but the number of children who need fulltime care and supervision, who are either functionally or completely non verbal, who have extreme sensory issues and who could not cope in a mainstream setting are very much in the minority. They are out there, but the figures do not appear as prevalent.

Gess - could you exlain the leaky gut thing you mentioned in your earlier post ?

Prof Baron-Cohen (Ali G's dad!) has the theory that two highly systemising personalities (ie genetically disposed to be more systemising than empathic) are more likely to produce extremely systematic children (ie ASD.) Since more women are working these days and more are in systemising jobs (IT etc) there is now more opportunity for such couples to meet and make babies than ever.
Don't know if that rings true with any of you?

Voila l'article.

dynomite- barhon cohen tends to work with HFA/AS- I don't think all that much of what he says relates to non high functioning.

theodores- yep - a paper was published in Gut journal at the end of last year. It suggested that things like diabetes (type 1) MS, allergies etc are increasing because more people have leaky guts. These allow larger molecules to get into the bloodstream via the gut and this then sets off an autoimmune reaciton. Some work on type 1 diabetes being triggered by gluten for example. The model is very similar to Wakefield's model, and people like Shattock working on autism.

In fact it was exactly what we had decided had happened to ds1, and was the reason we avoided certain things with ds2 and ds3 (both fine btw), so I was quite excited to see it in print It would tend to relate more to full blown autism rather than AS (which I tend to think Baron-Cohen may be onto something there- tends to be lots of AS type family history going on ). That's also what I meant by thinking that AS and autism as my son has it are 2 totally different things. I'm not suggesting there's 2 black and white types, but in a general sense AS appears to me to highly heritable in a condition sense (so someone inherits a tendency to AS), autism as my son has it appears to be heritable in a biological sense- so he would have inherited a tendency to autoimmunity which in his case has resulted in autism.

BTW- I don't thnk you can draw too much from support groups, I know lots of people with severely autistic children who don't attend autism support groups, or go online for them because they find them too depressing. Something like Treating Autism has a broad mix, about 50:50 I'd say, perhaps more who are not high functioning. The official figures vary but a lot of reports say that about 50% of children dxed with autism remain mute (depends perhaps on the definition of mute). Other studies say 70-80% have learning difficulties. They're out there, if not very often seen in public! (I'm trying to encourage attendence at NAS events from the severe end of the spectrum locally- but its proving very very difficult).

That's a good point about the message boards Gess, I hadn't thought of that. My son is too young now (only four) to know where on the spectrum he is, but I can imagine it must be upsetting for parents of older children if they feel they are in a minority with their child on a site.
I do wonder, though, considering that until fairly recently a lot of people still prescribed to the awful Betelheim (sp?) theory of autism, how many doctors did not like to impose a label of autism on children, believing the term used in the label would be detrimental and instead looked for other ways of describing the child's diffiulties and differences. Eg saying the child had learning disabilities and attention problems. And like others have said, those children in, say, the 1980's, who had severe difficulties would have been placed in special schools and before that placed in institutions.
I hope you're able to get more attendance from those people who either know, or are classed as low functioning yourself.
By the way, funny story about learning difficulties . My son is classed as more severe than me because of his difficulties in processing language, in understanding things and with his higher sensory issues. I got him a 35 piece jigsaw the other day that he did with no problems. Then I did the jigsaw (I was bored, ok :D). I thought I did pretty well until dh told me I'd put two pieces upside down.

But special schools have changed as well. DS1's school is for the most severe (any disability) in the city- the population has totally changed from learning difficulties associated with chromosomal problems to autism (there's also a large number of children with CP which has stayed about the same). People who come back (and they do at ds1's school some have been coming for 20 or 30 odd years- once a member you're there for life!) say they are staggered by the number of autisitic children they see in the school. These are what they see- not from looking at lists of diagnoses. I've heard an ex parent (her child is now in their 30's) who is now a govenor say 'where on earth are all these autistic children coming from?'. These children are all severe, and in many cases non-verbal. I can't remember when it was decided that children with learning difficulties had to be educated (fairly recently), but the people working with severe learning difficulties say they are coming across more and more and more autism.

You can see it within the school itself as well- there are far fewer autistic children in the seniors/just leaving age group (18/19) compared to the juniors.

I'm like bullet never got dx. All i know is from what i got from my GP notes. I was over 5 years old and was seen by the GP as my "mother" thought i had hearing problems as i hardly talked. The doctor wrote that he thought i had a behavioural disorder. I must of started school then?? All of a sudden i was trasferred to a specialist school for 2 years. And had on/off speech therapy until the age of 18. 2different years i came to getting discharged as i never turned up for appointments. The second time the salt had to contact the school to find out what happened to me. I had literacy and numeracy problems got assessed by an EP when i was about 14 and got told that i had average IQ.
All 3 of my children have got speech probs of different degrees, there's social communication disorder, my eldest is on the spectrum somewhere, there's verbal-oralmotor dyspraxia, ADHD, sensory intergration, audiotry processing, dyslexia etc.

And my "mother" thinks that she did the "BEST" for me, i remember her saying i think your dyslexic after seeing a peace of english retake (3rd attempt) coursework but did she think of getting me assessed????

And that there is nothing wrong with my 3 and it's all in my head............WTF!!!!!!!!!!

Can you tell that i severed all ties with her??

Told the paed about what i found about the ?behavioural dx and she wasn't surprised at all.

Colettemum3, can I just say your grammar, punctuation and spelling look impeccable to me!

I agree with Gess that the rise in children with severe autism cannot be just down to better diagnosis.

We are in odd position of having one DS at the very high-functioning aspergers end and one with regressive autism.

I do think that better diagnosis contributes to the rise at the AS end of the spectrum. I'm not convinced it accounts for all the rise even at the high functioning end, and I don't think it's really relevant at all at the lower functioning end.

I know a few dino in your position. (although not sure about regressive, I mean HFA/AS & severe in the same family). Ultimately I think there are many routes to autism, prob involving gene and environmental factors, producing different subgoups in the populaiton. Some subgroups will be very affected by the environment, some less soI think some of those subgroups are increasing in number (eg ones involving gut issues/autoimmunity), some are staying the same (by definition some will- eg autism associated with frag x). Some of the increase will be a real increase, some down to better diagnosis (esp AS). I think an increase in some subgroups is real though.

I think there's little hope of properly unravelling causes though until people start recognising the subgroups.

I'd be interested to know if it may be something to do with men and women having children when they're older.

That was suggested- older men I think. Doesn't appear to be true in ds1's school, a real mix (we were in our 20's when we had ds1, the parents are a whole mix of ages- in fact more younger parents there than at ds2's school).

here, although if the child themselves was being assessed by the draft board could only relate to HFA/AS Not clear from the report whether that's the case, but there's no way ds1 would ever be in front of a draft board answering questions about his parents!

Could I ask what people mean by regressive autism?
My ds has LFA and I think falls into this category. Thanks

These are alarming statistics!
(Taken from 132,000 children born in Israel in the '80s.)

"Among those whose fathers were between 15 and 29 when they were born, the rate of autism was six in every 10,000, rising to nine in every 10,000 when fathers were aged 30 to 39 (1.6 times higher).

In the group whose fathers were aged 40 to 49, the rate rose to 32 in 10,000 (5.75 times higher). "

Problem with behavioural / developmental stats is they tend to be negated by environment but this is such a large sample.

springgreens- regressive autism is autism that develops following a period of normal development. So the child loses skills (e.g. words, toiletting etc).

MrsMarvel- the last lot of UK stats released were 1 in 86 for primary aged children.

DH was well under 40 when we had DS3.

I was 24 and DH 26 when DS1 was born. He's an aspie. Unvaccinated, reared on organic food. Bloody annoying. Mind you, given DH is a scientist, hates social gatherings, wont talk on the phone I blame his genes