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autism and race - how common is it across the different groups out there

Iain

I mentioned here a few weeks ago that I was interested in finding more about the origins of autism as it seems to have a strong genetic component and I wondered if cultures which were more genetically isolated would have different levels of autism.

Well the bad news is that I couldn't find much data at all - the info on the communities I though would be most useful is not available or in a language that is too challenging to translate with accuracy.

The most interesting research info I came across was US based and talked about the differences between ethnic groups for diagnosis.

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/addm-community-report/spotlight-on-racial-ethnic-differences.html

This is a 2018 US report but is well written and quite accessable to read.

Note that the CDC has an alert at the top of the page that Trump is making them change the website so they don't know if the article will remain available.

The key points were a little surprising with whites being the least affected:

For the first time, the ADDM Network data found the percentage of 8-year-old children identified with ASD was higher among Black, Hispanic, and Asian or Pacific Islander (A/PI) children compared with White children.
Black - 2.93%
Hispanic - 3.16%
Asian - 3.34%
White - 2.43%

This is a surprise for me as the vast majority I have come in contact with have been white, certainly far more proportionally than their level of representation in the community.

There could be a lot of factors involved here - maybe my social circles are more exclusive than I though, maybe they have different views on sharing their diagnosis or maybe the higher rates of diagnosis are really only for youngsters who I don't really mix with much outside of my charity work.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the info here in case any were interested. I don't think there are any conclusions to be drawn from it but it does illustrate the genes seem present across all main cultural groups.

Parents

  • Definitely an interesting topic. I find that whenever you compare different races for any kind of trait/gene/statistic/etc. you're going to really struggle to find sound research on the topic.

    When you add autism into the mix, it becomes even more of a minefield... how do other countries across the globe define the threshold for what makes some autistic, as opposed to just having some autistic traits? How many autistic people are going about, undiagnosed? Etc. etc. etc.

  • in reply to orangutan

    I think how differnt countries define ASC will be a big one, somewhere that values homegnity very highly like many Asian countries might define it very differently to us, they may not even recognise it in their own populations and velieve it's something that only happens to us in the individualistic west? Already we see America having looser diagnostic criterian than us in the UK, probably because you pay for medication there. I wonder how many peope there are in the US who are undiagnosed because of high health care costs?

    I saw a bit of an articly the other day who's title was something like, How the internet made everyone believe they're ASC and ADHD, I think we're about to be on the front lines of the culture wars, with those of us who are "high functioning" being told we're not really ASC/ADHD, because we can string a sentence together or because we 'dont' look like there's anything wrong with us'. I think we are at risk of falling down a woke hole being created by neurotypicals who suffer from diagnosis envy.

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  • in reply to orangutan

    I think how differnt countries define ASC will be a big one, somewhere that values homegnity very highly like many Asian countries might define it very differently to us, they may not even recognise it in their own populations and velieve it's something that only happens to us in the individualistic west? Already we see America having looser diagnostic criterian than us in the UK, probably because you pay for medication there. I wonder how many peope there are in the US who are undiagnosed because of high health care costs?

    I saw a bit of an articly the other day who's title was something like, How the internet made everyone believe they're ASC and ADHD, I think we're about to be on the front lines of the culture wars, with those of us who are "high functioning" being told we're not really ASC/ADHD, because we can string a sentence together or because we 'dont' look like there's anything wrong with us'. I think we are at risk of falling down a woke hole being created by neurotypicals who suffer from diagnosis envy.

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