Martin mentioned in another post that there was research on "autism and the biologic-clock".
I dove into Google Scholar but it's not too easy. Some abstracts I found compelling are:
- Dysregulation of Circadian Rhythms in Autism Spectrum Disorders:
"Disturbed sleep-wake patterns, as well as abnormal melatonin and glucocorticoid secretion, show the relevance of an underlying impairment of the circadian timing system to the behavioral phenotype of ASD."
And
"Individuals with ASD presented longer sleep-onset latency, lower sleep efficiency, and decreased total sleep time and tended to be more sedentary and have less exposure to light. They also showed lower amplitude, low interdaily stability, and a different pattern of wrist temperature across the day, with a midpoint of sleep that did not concur with sleep midpoint indicated by the rest of circadian parameters." - Systematic Review of Sleep Disturbances and Circadian Sleep Desynchronization in Autism Spectrum Disorder (...), more specifically their conclusion:
- "(...) we may hypothesize a bidirectional relation between circadian sleep dysfunction and ASD."
- Are circadian rhythms new pathways to understand Autism Spectrum Disorder?, a few interesting pieces are:
"ASD probably results from intricate interactions between genes and the environment progressively altering development of brain structures and brain functions. According to this developmental hypothesis, the first observed symptoms, such as social orientation deficits, poor eye contact, atypical object manipulation, deficit in flexibility, emerge in early infancy, involve different experiences of the environment at each time, and progressively divert the development from the usual pathway"
And also:
"The light-dark cycle is the most important environmental Zeitgeber (time giver) for the phase entrainment of all circadian oscillators." And lastly, "In this paper, we will first review how circadian rhythms are intricate with the sleep cycle and how these circadian-sleep rhythms may be implicated in ASD. Secondly, we will review how circadian rhythms are implicated in the timing of the brain development and may suggest new insights in the etiology of an atypical neurodevelopment disorder such as Autism Spectrum Disorder."
- Biological correlates of altered circadian rhythms, autonomic functions and sleep problems in autism spectrum disorder, open article.
- Melatonin and Circadian Rhythm in Autism Spectrum Disorders: "Decreased melatonin levels were detected frequently in ASD and melatonin replacement treatment for sleep disorders accompanying ASD has given satisfactory results. Similarly, circadian rhythm disorders were frequently reported in ASD, which might increase the susceptibility to ASD through their effects on synaptic plasticity in the early neurodevelopment. Mutations in the clock-controlled genes were also common in ASD."
They aren't so much on the prevalence / epidemiology and population statistics (which is more my kind of interest.) so I will keep searching.
Maybe some members here have an interesting article to read or knowledge to share.
