健康英语新闻:Study suggests Autism sectrum disorder is under reported

BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Autism spectrum disorder may be under diagnosed and under reported worldwide and rigorous screening is needed for accurate estimates, said researchers in Monday's American Journal of Psychiatry.

Researchers from the Yale Child study Center, George Washington University and other leading institutions screened every child aged 7 to 12 in Ilsan district of the city of Goyang, a community of 488,590 in South Korea, and found more than two-thirds of ASD cases in the mainstream school population unrecognized and untreated.

They estimated the prevalence of ASD in South Korea to be 2.64 percent, or approximately 1 in 38 children.

The figure is more than twice the rate usually reported in the developed world. Even that rate, about 1 percent, has been climbing rapidly in recent years — from 0.6 percent in the United States in 2007, for example.

“From the get-go we had the feeling that we would find a higher prevalence than other studies because we were looking at an understudied population: children in regular schools,” said the lead researcher, Dr. Young-Shin Kim, a child psychiatrist and epidemiologist at the Yale Child study Center.

By contrast, other research groups measure autism prevalence by examining and verifying records of existing cases kept by health care and special education agencies, but leaving out many children whose parents and schools have never sought a diagnosis.

Kim said the researchers concluded autism prevalence estimates worldwide may increase if rigorous screening and comprehensive population studies are used to produce prevalence estimates.

But it is suggested the findings did not mean that the actual numbers of children with autism were rising, simply that the study was more comprehensive than previous ones.