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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

A summary of the CDC autism prevalence report

Some qoutes from the article: Overall, the prevalence was 1 in 88 (11.3 per 1,000). This continues the upward trend in prevalence estimates from the CDC. This varied a great deal state-to-state. Alabama had the lowest estimated prevalence at 4.1 per 1,000. Utah the highest at 21.2 per 1,000. Or, there is about a five fold variation in autism prevalence estimates, state-to-state. As with previous CDC reports, a large fraction of the children identified were not classified as autistic previously. In 2002, as many as 40% in some states were not classified as autistic before their records were reviewed. In general, over time the fraction previously unidentified has gone down. This would be consistent with schools and medical personnel getting better over time with identification of autism. In Utah, for an extreme example, over 70% of those identified as autistic have IQ scores above 85. The CDC report reads: When data from these seven sites were combined, 38% of children with ASDs were classified in the range of intellectual disability (i.e., IQ >70 or an examiner’s statement of intellectual disability), 24% in the borderline range (IQ 71–85), and 38% had IQ scores >85 or an examiner’s statement of average or above-average intellectual ability.

 Click here to read the full article. 

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