Posted on 11/26/2012 9:27:53 AM PST by Coleus
The rate of autism in New Jersey has doubled in six years to one in 49 children — and one in 29 boys — an “epidemic increase” in a disorder that has confounded researchers for decades. Two percent of children in the state are now identified with autism by their eighth birthday.
“The change was overwhelming in magnitude,” said Walter Zahorodny, the principal researcher in New Jersey for the federal study released Thursday. “Now it’s beyond an emergency.” Nationally, one in 88 children now has autism, a jump of 78 percent between 2002 and 2008, the new study found.
While at least part of the increase is attributed to enhanced awareness and better detection, the root causes of the escalation remain as mysterious as the disorder itself. Few in New Jersey are impervious to its effects, from the public expense of educating so many children to the private struggles of families whose children may never become fully independent adults.
New Jersey’s rate, as in the past, is among the highest in the nation. It is now second only to Utah’s, based on the 2008 data for 14 states reported Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Zahorodny said children here do not face a greater risk of developing the disorder. Rather, he said, health professionals and educators “are more attuned than elsewhere to the signs of autism.” It is the increasing rate of diagnosis in New Jersey and across the nation that has advocates concerned.
Autism New Jersey, a statewide advocacy organization, termed the rise “extremely alarming.” More resources are needed to train teachers and other professionals who work with people with autism, from diagnosis through adulthood, said Linda Meyer, its executive director. A Bergen County private school for children with autism, the Reed Academy in Oakland, enrolls 31 students but has a waiting list of more than 300, said its executive director, H. Todd Eachus.
One mother said she was beyond worrying about the causes of autism now that her daughter is 16. “When my daughter was diagnosed, it was one in 150 nationally. Now it’s one in 88,” said Barbara Strate, who manages an Internet community for families affected by autism that has 2,000 members.
Her greatest concern: “What happens to those one in 88 nationally when they become adults? What will happen to my daughter in five years when that yellow school bus no longer stops at our house?” Autism is a complex disorder that affects the brain’s development early in life, and is believed to have genetic and environmental causes. It interferes with a person’s ability to communicate, learn and form relationships. Behavior is often focused and repetitive.
The symptoms vary in combination and intensity. While some people with autism have normal or higher-than-normal intelligence and are seen as quirky and socially inept, others are unable to speak, sometimes bite, hit and scratch themselves, and require constant supervision. Clinicians refer to an “autism spectrum.”
Eighty percent of the children with autism in the New Jersey study were identified as having the most severe form of the disorder, said Zahorodny, who is an assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. They weren’t “borderline” cases. Boys were more than five times as likely to be diagnosed with autism as girls, both in New Jersey and in the rest of the country. Differences among racial and ethnic groups were not significant in the state, he said.
“People want answers to what’s causing autism and why we’re seeing such an increase in autism diagnoses,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director, said in a telephone news conference from Atlanta. “So do we.” There was some good news in the study: The age at diagnosis has dropped to 4 years nationally, and 3 years and 2 months in New Jersey. Early intervention holds the most hope of enabling children to reach their fullest potential. Researchers say the goal is to lower the age of diagnosis to 18 months.
“It’s critical to ask quickly” if parents have a concern about their child’s development, said Dr. Colleen Boyle, director of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. “Don’t wait.” Frieden cautioned that the rise in rates “may be entirely the result of better detection.” But others said that could explain only part of it.
“We know that the increase is partially due to increased awareness,” said Susanne Buchanan, Autism New Jersey’s clinical director. “Probably some is due to increased parental age. There’s some increased risk due to premature births.” But that accounts for only half of it, she said.
The study was based on a survey of educational and medical records for the more than 7,000 children who turned 8 in Union County in 2008. Previous studies, in 2000, 2002 and 2006 in New Jersey, included children who turned 8 in four counties. Zahorodny said he was confident the 2008 data represented a “true rate.” New Jersey had an average of eight to 10 records for each child, compared with three or four in other states, the study said. That may indicate that children here are evaluated more thoroughly and are more likely to be identified with an autism disorder.
“Better detection, particularly among children who may not have come to attention in the past, including girls and minorities,” may have contributed to the higher rates here, said state Health Commissioner Mary E. O’Dowd. The state’s high rate does not reflect a migration of families from other states to take advantage of the services provided here, Zahorodny said. More than 80 percent of the children identified with autism were born in New Jersey, a higher rate of in-state births than other states in the study.
The tracking studies are useful to policymakers as they allocate state and federal resources to autism diagnosis and treatment. A full report of 2006 New Jersey data is expected to be published shortly. Researchers are currently analyzing 2010 data and beginning to collect 2012 data.
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>> “so the kids who have real problems are not nearly as well-served as they would be by true research on real cures” <<
.
The real cures are always spiritual in nature for things like autism. All the “research” in the world will ignore the evidence.
How wonderful that you worked in this area, and I too have researched many of these observations, that I feel have some merit.. Unfortunately my grandson has displayed some of the most obvious symptoms early in his development, and his dad and mom were so loving and responsive..
As he has grown, he became more abusive to himself and others that interactive with him.. Sad really, and you are correct, he is very intelligent, in spite of his communicative limitations..
He has been enrolled in private specialty education with highly professional Autism specialist almost from the beginning of his diagnoses at 3 years old.. Thankfully their insurance and our personal income has allowed us to afford him his greatest opportunity to evolve with his own unique development..
Somewhere there is a government check attached to being diagnosed as autistic.
We have our 20 year old son with us now, he is not high functioning. Our concern is what will happen to him when we are to old or pass on. There are no good answers.
Aspergers is an ASD
Now you know
the kid gets crazy checks!!!!!!
My grandson will be graduating from college in May with a degree in software engineering and while he has some quirks, he is high functioning. He still walks on his tip toes, which drives me crazy.
He had a difficult birth and I've always wondered if that could be a factor but he has come a long way since being a little guy.
Yep. That’s it. I believe the powder on his hat was supposed to be chemical waste. He nods his head while eating and the dust falls all over his sandwich.
That’s fine. But with these threads you’re always going to hear from someone who has a child with real developmental problems that takes issue with the assertion that the diagnosis rates are over inflated, but base that opinion on exactly one data point... their own. I’m not demeaning anyone’s life situation, but the fact remains that it’s big business for the drug pushers and “mental health” industry, and it’s going to bolster the reported rates.
GMO foods are relatively new. What I’m referring to is the replacement of sugar with HFCS (due to sugar tariffs), the replacement of Saturated fats (eg coconut oil) with Unsaturated fats across the board (eg oreos). Also, the quality of chicken/pork is pretty crappy in the US.
It never ends.
I am not disagreeing with you, and that would have been my kneejerk reaction without my personal experiences with this affliction..
I have been in and out of hundreds of facilities that specialize in this particular problem, and I have not personally witnessed any philandering with government funding, unless it was underfunding for children of folks that were not as fortunate as we were..
This thing is horrid in it's demand on resources, personal and financially, and we are no closer to a cure, if that is even possible, than we were when I was shaken into it's dynamics 11 years ago..
I am in Texas, and cannot speak to any other states, although we, parents of the Autistic kids, talk often with parents and professionals all over the world..
Grandma, I would give up my right arm if my grandson could function enough to go to a class anywhere near his age group.. G_D bless your boy and your family, thank your stars that he is who he is.. :)
Care to elaborate?
At age 4, I visited his preschool and his teacher told me that he wrote them a note that said that he liked to play with trucks and puzzles, too. They said he spelled everything correctly and even put the comma in front of the "too". They were amazed.
We took him to the zoo at about the same age but it took one person always holding his hand because he would just take off, not knowing where he was. My daughter and her husband had to put a latch high up on the door to keep him from running away. He became lost more than once. He could read a newspaper by age 4 and it was evident he was reading it because he would babble out loud and if we could look at the paper, we could see he knew the words. Gradually, his speech improved.
He began entering spelling contests but later entered math contests where he almost always took first place. Some of the wins were quite impressive.
He was actually quite popular in HS as he was on the student council each year and a homecoming king candidate as a senior.
He is somewhat reclusive now but I think he's content with that. He's realizing that he will now have to go into the real world and earn a living. I think some professions gravitate to people with his "problem". It is likely he will end up in Silicon Valley much to his grandmother's dislike BUT we'll see. I just pray for he best for him but from what I read about Silicon Valley, there are many like him there.
Interestingly enough, it appears many of the highly educated folks in that area have many offspring with autistic spectrum disorders.
This just adds to the curiosity. Before the last election, he was home during Thanksgiving break and we were talking about the election. My buttons nearly popped when he announced that he had gotten all the propaganda about Obama, too but he decided to apply logic to his decision and he voted for McCain. At least he wasn't gullible. I pray for you and your family.
Chemical waste - yeah, that was it. Anyone who had to pass through the industrial area of Elizabeth, NJ loved that character!
But we also have exposure to a whole culture of kids like ours and the parents and caregivers and teachers who work with them.
You take an article like this and read (and spread) internet opinions that doctors teachers pharm companies welfare families researchers and others are “making up” an epidemic to defraud.
We get up everyday and give our kids meds and hope we can get them to school or to therapy sessons and hope they have a good enough day to learn at least one tiny little adaptive skill to function in a “normal” world.
You see doctors special ed teachers and pharm companies as greedy shysters. We see them as angels and our kids’ lifelines
Now, mighty I ask what is your “data point” for your assertion that the autism epidemic is really a giant misuse of medical diagnoses to defraud the US government? Internet articles you read? Anecdotes and opinions from people who post on the internet?
Now I have to get back to work- I've got my autistic young man next to me struggling through world geography on his computer. I am working real hard to get him through 6 high school subjects in homeschool this year!
LOL.
My son was always ‘difficult’, but something happened when he turned nine.
Every night was a nightmare. We could not sit as a family and watch a cartoon with the kids. He was crawling up the walls.
I started noticing that he was very upset by noise. If I ran the vacuum, he’d run and hide under his bed or in his closet. Once he tried to crawl under a throw rug.
The best way I can describe his expression was a ‘mask’. An empty grin. He would hold his hands up to his shoulders and make a ‘flapping’ motion. He would be grinning, eyes empty, screaming ‘whoop! whoop!’ when you were talking to him. And his eyes ‘jittered’. One eye would be spasming very fast and the other would be staring at the wall.
As I said, he’d always had issues, but this was severe. I insisted that he see a pediatric neurologist.
The neuro saw everything that I saw within 15 minutes. He agreed that something was very wrong. This looked like brain damage.
He ran 35 pages of blood work. “First we look at the blood, then we look at the brain.”
Result? He had celiac disease and selective IGA deficiency.
We took him off gluten and two weeks later we had a normal child. He’s 19 and starting college now.
I’m not saying that every kid has a gluten problem, but I am saying that this epidemic is very real and very serious. Everyone here who’s blowing it off as an easy way to get money is an idiot.
Something (or many things) are screwing with our kids’ brains and this is not being made up.
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