Thursday, March 29, 2012

New CDC Autism Number - 1 in 88

As expected, the CDC announced yet another major increase in the estimated prevalence of autism.  As of 2008, 1 in 88 eight year old children had a form of autism.  To put this increase into perspective, consider the CDC's published autism rates for 2000 to 2008.


See the pattern? Maybe this will help.


Or consider this little fact - the CDC's estimated prevalence of autism has almost doubled went up 78% in the span of eight six years.  If the current pattern holds (and I hope it doesn't), children born today would have about a 1 in 50 chance of having a form of autism.

If you are interested, the full report is available here.

4 comments:

  1. Check the IQ numbers for an amazing surprise, Figure 4 . The new autism is highest in Utah, where 90% of kids have NO intellectual disability.

    Follow the autism gravy train...http://raggette.blogspot.com/2011/05/okay-now-is-your-chance-to-use-brains.html A picture tells a thousands words.

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  2. I saw that Utah statistic but I think there might be something strange about that data point. The "IQ Unknown" part of the chart is a lot larger than the ones from other states.

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  3. "In the seven sites with IQ test data available on at least 70% of children with ASDs in both the 2002 and 2008 surveillance years, estimated prevalence of ASD with intellectual disability increased 45% on average (3.2–4.6 per 1,000), while the estimated prevalence of ASD with borderline intellectual ability increased 117% (1.4–2.9 per 1,000), and the estimated prevalence of ASD with average or above-average intellectual ability increased 93% (2.4–4.7 per 1,000)."---I was surprised to see an increase of 50% in the ID range. It was not as high as the non-ID kids, who doubled.

    I feel a confounder, which many attribute surreptitiously to 40 hours of ABA per week, is the atypical developmental trajectory of Autism: being a language disorder, it climbs up the IQ ladder as the child learns to communicate. Just a few hours a week working on language skills can take a child from the ID range to high normal over a course of a few years, if the ability is there.

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  4. Great post, I appreciate you and I would like to read your next post.Thanks for creating this informative post.

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