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.

Researchers speculate the increase could be due in part to a broader definition of the autism spectrum compared to previous surveys and a greater awareness of the disorder. But, experts say it goes beyond that. “I think there’s no question there’s a real increase going on,” said Dr. Rochelle Harris of Children’s Mercy Hospital. “We need to put more resources to fully understand or attempt to understand where this increase is coming from.” Dr. Harris theorizes that a genetic component may be combining with things in the environment to cause autism.

There seems to be no clear-cut explanation for the 40 percent of children in the study who had been diagnosed with ASD but whose parents said no longer had the disorder. It could be that such children were tentatively classified as having ASD when they were very young and then the diagnosis was later changed. “We do know that individuals with autism can have a diagnosis early on and then lose that diagnosis, and we don’t know the factors that could explain this,” Dawson said. “Is it having received good, early behavioral intervention? Or, is there a group of kids that have better biological outcomes? Or, it may have something to do with how kids get diagnosed at different ages. Maybe as kids develop, they may not be getting the same kind of evaluations.”

The prevalence increase raises “a lot of questions about how we are preparing in terms of housing, employment, social support—all the issues that many of these people (with ASD) are going to need,” said Dr. Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “It also raises questions about how well we’re prepared in the educational system to provide for the special needs of many of these kids.” Currently, the Autism Society estimates that the lifetime cost of caring for a child with autism ranges from $3.5 million to $5 million, and that the United States is facing almost $90 billion annually in costs for autism (this figure includes research, insurance costs and non-covered expenses, Medicaid waivers for autism, educational spending, housing, transportation, employment, in addition to related therapeutic services and caregiver costs).

Source: HealthNews