Another reason for an increase in autism rates

Post Reply New Topic

See I was at this autism group meeting and their was a doctor there. They were discussing the pockets of autism, people on the spectrum. A lot of people on the spectrum or near the spectrum tended to be in science He thought that one of the reasons for rising autism rates are that more women in the 70s and 80s were entering the science fields. With the right mix of genes, you get someone on the spectrum. So more math/science like women(on or near the spectrum) were more likely to meet men on (or near) the spectrum so with the right mix of genes, there comes a child on the spectrum. In the past, maybe less geek minded people were reproducing with other geeks or maybe less geeks were reproducing in general. Who knows?? Just a theory...

That would certainly explain the high rates of autism in the Silicon Valley in California......

It is really confusing. On the olsat my verbal marks were slightly better than the nonverbal part. That is to be expected, since both my parents are newspaper editors. However all my interests are in math and science. I do better in these subjects too. My dad is undiagnosed but im pretty sure he is bap or as. My mom is nt. It sorts of remind me like in math, minus times minus equal positive... Haha.

Sounds relatively plausible.

There is a large proportion of scientists, engineers and academics in my family and almost all of them would qualify as a basal autistic phenotype.

There are no scientists or engineers in my family.

It may simply be a matter of more people being diagnosed than ever before. That difference makes it impossible to compare children from the 70's with children of today.

I wonder if it's maybe people being healthier in general, and therefore carrying more pregnancies to term than they would have previously. It would make sense that some of those "marginal" pregnancies would be atypical in some way.

Same with increased early childhood survival rates.

There are a bunch of things probably leading to more children born with autism or whatever.

Better healthcare in general means more successful pregnancies.

Better diagnoses. Or at least public knowledge is increasing and therefore leading to more diagnoses.

More people are getting treatment. This (ideally) gives them a better quality of life and makes them more equipped to be in a functioning relationship with someone, inevitably leading to more people on the spectrum having children, which I assume means the child is more likely to have the some problem.

As the overall human population grows you'd probably expect larger numbers of children with autism (though this may not affect proportions).

I think the main thing is though that many adults went undiagnosed.

Probably the more important reason is change in diagnostic criteria - after all, nobody was being diagnosed with AS or PDD/NOS when I was a child or an adolescent.

Yes plenty of people cited a change of diagnostic criteria and thats defenetly a reason. We need to get info that compares LFA diagnosis of today to general autism diagnosis of before to see how much increase there truely is. I read an article that said when the DSM 4 came out, it included aspergers and it also lowered the threshold for autism in general. With these came all the HFA, aspergers, etc. But its undeniable there is a huge rise in autism diagnosis in general that is not all accountable due to HFA and aspergers.

I like his theory and it seems very plausible. I know, Im a science oriented person, and if I get married, its likely going to be a male whos also very math/science oriented. Im attracted mostly to males who are aspie like, not quite aspergers but close, BAP. Like minded individuals are attracted to each other. If I do marry such a male, the chances that were gonna have kids on the spectrum is probably high.

I think the theory is that BAP/autistic women otherwise would have a relatively low probability of marrying a BAP/autistic man, but if they go into science they meet more BAP/autistic men and therefore are more likely to marry one. It's a phenomenon known as assortative mating - people don't pick mates at random, they tend to pick mates who are in their social circle and share interests with them. As a result, you'll often find that both partners have features of the same neurological difference.

But before we start theorizing about why autism might be increasing, we need to find out if it actually is increasing. If there is any true increase in autism, it's being greatly overwhelmed by the increase in diagnosis of autism. Sadly, I couldn't find any data about the rate of childhood schizophrenia in the 50s and 60s because people back then weren't big on epidemiology.