About 1% of U.S. Children Have Autism Spectrum Disorder

Posted on December 22, 2009 in Health & Medicine, Parenting, Recent Studies

About 1% of kids in the United States have autism spectrum disorder, a classification that includes autism, Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disabilities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 1 in 110 children.

The new data represents a 50% increase from two years ago, when the CDC estimated that 1 in 150 children are affected by autism spectrum disorder. The study focused on children who were 8 years old in 2006, because research shows that most cases of autism spectrum disorder are diagnosed at that age. The research group did not investigate causes, although other CDC studies are.

Boys were about 4.5% more likely than girls to be diagnosed with the disorder, which matches well with studies that show that about 80% of sufferers are male. The average age of diagnosis was found to be 4.5, which was about five months earlier than had been the case in 2002.