Is Autism Rising

A question of some debate is whether autism is on the rise. Autism was first described by Leo Kanner in 1943, when he wrote about 11 children born in the 1930's who were “markedly and uniquely different from anything described so far.” Since then autism diagnoses have constantly risen through the years, reaching to the point where 1 in 150 children born develop some form of ASD.

Is autism really on the rise or is the constant rise in autism diagnoses due solely to awareness and broadening the defintion of autism? Did Kanner write about something that was common, yet nobody had bothered to describe, or did he really describe a new disease? Were autistics alweays there, but just called by another name before? You can find opinions on both sides of the fence.

Prevalence of Autism

The CDC estimates that 1 in every 150 children has autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The CDC based this figure on a study released in 2007 . The study looked at eight year old children across 14 study sites. At six sites the children were born in 1992 and evaluated in 2000, at the other eight sites the children were born in 1994 and evaluated in 2002.

Another US study published in 2003 estimated autism prevalence at 3.4 per 1000 (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.2-3.6), which is about 1 in 294.