Autism biomarkers, ADHD biomarkers

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Autism and ADHD are becoming better understood, but clinicians can still find the two conditions difficult to tell apart. Now, South Australian researchers say they've identified biomarkers that could allow these two conditions to be diagnosed and distinguished from one another using a simple eye test.

They're very different conditions, but they sometimes overlap, and in many cases the behaviors involved look the same, making it hard to differentiate between the two conditions and put kids on the right treatment paths.
Finders University research optometrist Dr. Paul Constable has been working on detecting Autism through retinal scanning for many years now – we last wrote about his work in 2019. But in a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, Constable and a team from the University of South Australia, McGill University, Montreal, University College London and the Great Ormond Street Hospital in the UK say they've found a particular electroretinogram (ERG) signal that can not only be used to separate ADHD and autism cases from control cases, but to clearly distinguish between the two conditions.

ERGs are a standard diagnostic test that opticians have been using since the 1940s to identify retinal disorders. Flashes of light, or certain patterns, are shown to the patient while an electrode – either a thin fiber, or a contact lens – is in contact with the cornea. The electrical activity in the retina can thus be recorded at the cornea non-invasively.

The study examined 55 ADS-diagnosed subjects, 15 ADHD-diagnosed subjects and 156 control individuals aged between 3 and 27, running them through an ERG test. Significant differences were found between control subjects, ASD patients and ADHD patients in b-wave energy levels and oscillatory potentials, with ADHD patients showing high overall ERG energy levels and ASD patients showing lower overall ERG energy levels than control patients.

While further work will be required before this technique can be used in diagnosis, the researchers say it could potentially be used to spot a range of other neurological conditions as well as ASD and ADHD.

Though I gotta agree that with the above sentiment I am reluctant to have some one mess with my eyes for no obvious benefit (though the article says that the test is somehow 'noninvasive'). But its a start.