Sex, age of diagnosis correlate with autism comorbidities
ASPartOfMe
Veteran
![User avatar](./download/file.php?avatar=90110_1451070500.jpg)
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,462
Location: Long Island, New York
The study assessed whether an autistic person’s age, age of diagnosis or birth sex changed their chance of having any of 11 commonly co-occurring conditions, including epilepsy, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It drew on data from roughly 16,000 people with autism and more than 650,000 people without autism up to 16 years old in the Danish National Patient Registry, a large dataset that records the birth date and sex of people in the Danish hospital system and all diagnoses they receive.
Among people diagnosed late, at 11 to 15 years old, 26 percent of girls and 13 percent of boys were also diagnosed with an affective disorder, the study found. An opposite trend occurred for intellectual disability; 40 percent of people with an early autism diagnosis had an intellectual disability, compared with just 10 percent of people with a late autism diagnosis.
Perhaps the diverse nature of autism is partly explained by age, such that different ‘types’ of autism appear at different stages in life, Rødgaard says. Or “symptoms of psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety or ADHD, make it more likely that a child is also assessed for autism, potentially causing autism to commonly be diagnosed during the age period where a given comorbid condition would be more likely to develop.”
The data may also reflect uncertainty in how autism is diagnosed. Because autism and co-occurring conditions, such as anxiety, are often diagnosed close in time, it may suggest that there's no clear boundary delineating where autism ends and those other conditions begin, Mottron says. "Is autism a natural category or not? That's not solved."
For all of the 11 co-occurring conditions considered in the paper, the age of autism diagnosis was the single biggest predictor for whether a participant had that condition. But sex was another major factor for many of the conditions.
“In psychiatry, you have some conditions that appear much more frequently in boys than in girls, such as conduct disorders,” Mottron says. “But amazingly, when these conditions are comorbid with autism, the odds ratios reverse. It means that conditions that are more frequent in boys than in girls in the general population, in autism it goes completely the other way around.”
Autism comorbidities show elevated female-to-male odds ratios and are associated with the age of first autism diagnosis
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
It is Autism Acceptance Month
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
Double Retired
Veteran
![User avatar](./download/file.php?avatar=144417_1598363311.jpg)
Joined: 31 Jul 2020
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,247
Location: U.S.A. (Mid-Atlantic)
![Shocked 8O](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
_________________
When diagnosed I bought champagne!
I finally knew why people were strange.
I don't count because I don't have real comorbidities.
The closest I got was some form of anxiety and misophonia at age 10 and it was unofficial.
When my behaviors are more disruptive -- and I've been usually violent even before that.
The anxiety and misophonia doesn't lasts further in my teenage years, nor ever carried over further until now because I simply do not have it -- my autism is not a 'reaction'.
Still, I would've had to be diagnosed much earlier.
_________________
Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).
Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.
Based on my history I could conclude that age is correlated, to a degree. My complications came about because neither I nor the people around me knew anything about autism, its struggles and its limits, so insufficent care for areas of concern caused proverbial 'festering' until they developed into full-blown, long-term complications. There's also something to be said about pre-existing complications being aggravated and pulled into the light by a person's decreasing overall state of health, causing them to no longer be able to cope with something that was previously insignificant.
That being said, there is no way to confirm that early diagnosis (and therefor awareness) would have averted the critical thresholds of complication development. Adequate support is more than just pills and a therapist. Earlier diagnosis would likely help many, but in some cases it might also be harmful.
_________________
Thank you deeply for sharing your experiences. I don't feel so alone anymore.
This may also be affected by 'less severe' autism being largely unrecognised and undiagnosed before the early 1990s. I was diagnosed at 59 years, I have diagnoses of 'Generalised Anxiety Disorder' and 'Social Phobia' in addition to ASC.
_________________
Retired biomedical researcher - molecular/cell biology of tropical disease/parasitology.
Diagnosed with ASC, GAD and social phobia.
nobody knew about autism when I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, I was treated unsuccessfully for years before being diagnosed as autistic. As I learned about my autism I got insights into all sorts of things from my painful past and began to understand how autism had played a role in all the pain and misunderstandings, almost every horrible thing that happened to me had autism working behind the scenes without anybody knowing or understanding that. Getting counseling to learn healthy decision making and to communicate self assertively in healthy ways saved my life and sanity, but the depression and anxiety did not begin to lift until my autism diagnosis. We hear all the time of people misdiagnosed and mis-treated for those diagnoses for years and years, being told we are "atypical" for those diagnoses because nobody knew about autism and the diagnosing professionals ticked the box closest to their understanding at the time. I suspect many of those comorbid conditions may be expressions of autism and categorized as the named diagnoses simply because those were the handy and better understood diagnoses at the time. New information and understanding of autism is "out there" but most diagnosing professionals even today are not using current information to provide diagnosis. thanks once again for bringing new studies to this group, I love reading the insights that members often share.
_________________
https://oldladywithautism.blog/
"Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” Samuel Johnson
Dear_one
Veteran
![User avatar](./download/file.php?avatar=16838.jpg)
Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 75
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,717
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines
Similar Topics | |
---|---|
Early autism diagnosis=no personality |
19 Mar 2024, 6:56 am |
Pre official diagnosis self diagnosis accuracy |
07 Mar 2024, 1:48 am |
Hello, new here, no diagnosis yet |
19 Mar 2024, 12:48 pm |
Does the community approve of self-diagnosis? |
02 Mar 2024, 6:58 pm |