Prevalence of Autism Estimated at More Than 1% of All Children

Last week, President Obama paid a visit to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he announced $5 billion in grants to fund new explorations of long-time biomedical research targets from cancer to heart disease. The grants also include the largest-ever investment in an area that the President has made a focus from the first days of his presidency—autism research. Altogether, the federal government will provide nearly twice as much funding for autism research in the upcoming fiscal year as they did just three years ago. And it appears this increased funding couldn’t have come at a better time, especially in light of a new government study that suggests autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have nearly doubled since the last survey conducted in 2003.

The study, published in the October issue of Pediatrics, estimates the prevalence of ASD to be about one in every 91 children, a significant increase from the previous 2003 estimate of one in 150. That currently translates to about 673,000 American children with some form of autism. “I think this is a very important study that says the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders may be even higher than we suspected previously,” said Geraldine Dawson, chief scientific officer of Autism Speaks. “Autism is a major public health challenge, and this study is another call to action that we need to be able to provide care across the lifespan.”

The researchers based the estimates on data from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, which included 78,037 children between 3 and 17 years of age. A telephone survey of their parents revealed that 1,412 of the children had been diagnosed with ASD. However, only 913 parents said their child currently had ASD. Of that group, 494 classified their child’s autism as mild, 320 as moderate, and just 90 said their child’s autism was severe. The odds of being diagnosed with ASD were four times higher for boys than girls.