Results far higher than previous estimates

Autism higher among boys, whites

Reuters | Dec 18, 2009

By JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) – Autism, a brain disorder that interferes with communication and social skills, affected an estimated one in 110 American 8-year-olds in 2006, according to a federal study released on Friday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the medical diagnoses of 307,790 children who were age 8 in 2006. They found 2,757, or 0.9 percent, had been diagnosed with autism.

The CDC team found that autism cases were four to five times higher among boys than girls, with 1 in 70 boys and 1 in 315 girls identified.

The overall ratio is far higher than previous estimates that the incurable family of conditions affected 1 in 150 U.S. children. A few decades ago autism was thought to be rare.

The average increase since 2002 for boys was 60 percent while the average increase for girls was 48 percent, the study said.

The CDC also found autism was far more common among non-Hispanic white children, but found increases in autism among all racial groups included in the review.

Researchers reported a 55 percent increase in autism for white children, 41 for black children and 90 percent among Hispanic children. Estimates of increases for Asian/Pacific Islander children ranged from 1.0 percent to 16.2 percent, the CDC said.

The CDC’s Catherine Rice, who led the study, said there was no single factor behind the rising numbers of the brain disease.

“Some of the increases are due to better detection, particularly among children who may not have come to attention in the past — including girls, Hispanic children and children without cognitive impairment,” Rice told reporters.

But she said something may be happening to make autism more common as well.

The researchers said most children with autism showed symptoms before age three, but identification is often not made until later. The CDC study found the average age of diagnosis was 4-1/2 years.

The study analyzed data collected from 11 Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network sites — in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

There is no cure for autism, a spectrum of diseases ranging from severe and profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms. But experts believe intensive, early treatment can help many children with the disorder.

“Before the 1980s, the term ‘autism’ was used primarily to refer to autistic disorder and was thought to be rare, affecting approximately one in every 2,000 children,” the researchers wrote.

Parents and advocates have been alarmed by the rise in numbers since then, although some of the increase could be attributed to changes in diagnosis and classification.

The advocacy group Autism Speaks called on the U.S. government to step up its efforts to develop treatments.

“We need meaningful action now that acknowledges the scope of this problem and allocates the resources necessary to take the fight against autism to a new level,” co-founder Bob Wright said in a statement.

Autism research is due for a large infusion of money from President Barack Obama’s $5 billion plan to boost U.S. medical and scientific research.

“There’s a multi-pronged approach going on because we know that there is no single cause for autism. We’re not going to find the one answer,” the CDC’s Rice said.

Autism researchers are looking at a broad range of potential environmental factors, including household products, medical treatments, diet, food supplements and infections. Some recent studies have found strong evidence of several genetic causes for autism.

Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), the world’s largest drugmaker, announced in July that it has begun developing treatments for autism.

Palm Beach Post  | Dec 18, 2009

By Stacey Singer

One in every 100 children in the United States may have some form of autism spectrum disorder, far more than previously believed, and the rate appears to be worsening quickly, especially among boys, new figures from the CDC show.

Researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the 2006 medical and school records of 308,000 children in 11 communities, including Miami. They found rates of autism much higher than a similar study done in 2002, said Catherine Rice, of the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.

The 2000 data had suggested one in 150 children were affected.

It was a stunning run-up of 59 percent in four years, and the increase could not be explained just by better awareness or an expanded diagnosis, researchers found. The findings were published Friday in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The findings should be treated as a national emergency, autism activists said.

“We are at a crossroads here,” said Palm Beach resident Bob Wright, founder of the nonprofit foundation Autism Speaks. “We need an integrated governmental approach to deal with the environment and genetics and treatment and diagnosis and ongoing life needs of these children.”

The former vice chairman of General Electric and longtime CEO of TV network NBC and NBC Universal, Wright and his wife, Suzanne, started the nonprofit after their grandson Christian regressed into profound autism.

“Our grandson spoke beautifully at age 2, and then over 120 days he lost it all,” Suzanne Wright said. “My little guy was speaking up a storm, and then little by little he lost everything.”

Autism spectrum disorders are really a group of developmental problems that affect the brain. They leave children unable to learn, think, communicate and interact like their peers. While some function relatively well, like those with Asperger’s syndrome, others, like the Wrights’ grandson, sink into profound disability, unable to speak, and trapped in repetitive movements.

The Wrights have spent long hours wondering what could have sent their grandson into the darkness. Was it a vaccine? His strep throat infection? Something he was eating or breathing?

The study released Friday addressed only the prevalence of autism, not its possible causes, Rice said. But a major research effort is under way to find the causes, and better treatments. The National Institutes of Health put $60 million in economic stimulus money toward the effort in April.

At The Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, neuroscientist Dr. Claes Wahlestedt is studying the genetics of Fragile X syndrome, which is often accompanied by autism.

“The dilemma with autism is that they are probably a bunch of different disorders. As we understand more, we will be able to subdivide the disease, and that will lead to better treatments down the line,” Wahlestedt said. “What it is in the environment that is changing so dramatically I cannot understand. But the genetics are arguably little changed.”

Autism is seen more often in the offspring of older parents, whose sperm and eggs accrue more genetic damage. It also tends to run in twins, giving weight to the argument that genetics are the main culprit. But evidence also argues for an environmental trigger.

Research has ruled out vaccinations, said Dr. Jeff Brosco, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Miami . Further research is focusing on pollution, diet, food additives, vitamin D deficiency, nutritional supplements, household chemicals, cosmetics and more.

“We really still don’t understand why some children get autism and some don’t,” Brosco said. “There are something like 80,000 chemicals in our environment and we have good information on 400 or 500.”

The study found a large variation in rates of the disorder. The highest rates were in Arizona and Missouri, where 12 children per 1,000 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The lowest were in Miami-Dade County, where 4.2 children per 1,000 were diagnosed.

Rice said that researchers had to go by medical records alone in Florida and some other communities. “We think the sites on the lower end are an underestimate,” Rice said.

In Palm Beach County, 1,405 people are known to have an autism diagnosis, and all but 200 of those are under age 21, said Pam Minelli, the parent of a 12-year-old autistic son. She’s involved with the Autism Project of Palm Beach County, which is raising money for a charter school campus for autistic children.

Minelli and her husband helped build up two charter schools for autistic children, the Renaissance Learning Center, which educates 64 children ages 3 to 14, and a new high school, the Renaissance Learning Academy, which serves 22 kids ages 14 to 21. Both are on Corporate Drive in West Palm Beach.

“We have 47 kids on the waiting list,” Minelli said. She’s now hoping to raise enough money to build an expanded campus able to support 300 autistic kids.

“With the CDC numbers, I am afraid we are going to have no problem filling those slots,” Minelli said.

Employees of France Telecom, Europe’s third-biggest telecoms firm, demonstrate in front France Telecom’s headquarters in Marseille October 20, 2009 to protest against a wave of suicides at the former state monopoly that unions blame on restructuring and work pressure. The banner reads ” No to Torment at Work. No to the Stress. No to 150 Employees in the Same Workplace”.  Reuters

Corporate Culture and Stress Cited as Contributing to 26 Deaths in Last 18 Months

CBS | Nov 20, 2009

If you work, no one has to tell you that stress is part of just about every job. But at one company it’s out of control.

France Telecom is undergoing a major restructuring with the goal of cutting $2.25 billion in expenses. But as the company strives to save money, it’s losing employees to an epidemic of suicide, CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports from Paris.

Ludovic Nouclerq started hallucinating about hanging himself one year ago. He was a manager at France Telecom and was told he had failed to achieve corporate goals, a common experience in the working world.

But Nouclerq claims that in the case of this giant company, undermining employees is a deliberate management strategy that has led to suicide.

“I knew that what I will do won’t be successful,” said Nouclerq, who says he was being set up to fail.

France Telecom began a massive re-organization three years ago, cutting one fifth of its workforce. Since then employees have been going to a lot of funerals. There have been 26 in the last 18 months.

In France, the suicide rate is 16 suicides per 100,000. At France Telecom, it is 17.6.

Work is usually not the reason for suicide. But in the case of France Telecom, many of those who have committed or attempted suicide have directly blamed the company and its management for creating working conditions that have made their lives intolerable.

The suicides and dozens of attempts are happening all over the French network. Suicide notes tell similar stories, blaming constant pressure to resign, impossible goals, frequent forced relocations and chaotic reorganization.

One woman jumped to her death from her fifth floor office window after she was told her job was changing yet again and that she was being assigned to another new boss.

“I’d rather die,” she wrote.

Yonnel Dervin stabbed himself in the stomach at work after his manager told him he no longer had the skills the company needed.

“You’re in your own bubble. Too bad. It’s a bubble without oxygen. You understand? You just can’t live anymore,” Dervin said through a translator.

Noelle Burgi has studied the France Telecom problem and says suicide is just the tip of the iceberg.

“People are treated like numbers,” Burgi said. “It’s a cumulative process.”

The company’s CEO, Didier Lombard, was booed by employees after yet another suicide. Pressured by the French government to stop the deaths, Didier has had to announce the suspension of job transfers and corporate re-organization at least until the end of the year.

But suicide attempts at the company continue and no one thinks these measures will put an end to this epidemic any time soon.

VOA | Nov 17, 2009

By Al Pessin

The U.S. Army reported Tuesday that the number of suicides among soldiers this year has already equaled the number for all of last year, and so will rise for the fifth consecutive year, in spite of a major effort to combat the trend. The Army’s number two officer says he is significantly short of the type of professionals who could help reverse the trend.

The vice chief of the Army, General Peter Chiarelli was frank about the latest statistics.

“This is horrible, and I do not want to downplay the significance of these numbers in any way,” he said.

The general reported there have been 140 suicides among active duty soldiers this year, and another 71 among reservists and members of the National Guard, some of whom had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

“We talk about these incidents of suicide using figures and percentages,” he said. “However the grim reality is each case represents an individual, a person, with family and friends and a future ahead of him or her. Every single loss is devastating.”

But while the overall numbers are up, General Chiarelli says the rate has eased in recent months. Nearly 30 percent of Army suicides this year happened in January and February, with a steady decline since then except for a couple of months. But the general says in spite of extensive efforts, officials and doctors can not say why the rate is up in some months or down in others, or why it has risen steadily for the last five years.

“Everywhere I try to cut this and look at and try to find the causal effect I get thwarted, and that’s why we think we’ve got to look, in its totality, at a whole bunch of different issues. And it’s going to take time,” he said.

The general says even seemingly obvious causes are not confirmed by the data. For example, about a third of the suicides are among soldiers who have never deployed to the war zones. But he says the Army has begun to identify some factors that could contribute to the high suicide rates, including post-traumatic stress, mild brain injuries that may not be diagnosed, substance abuse and the deployment of small numbers of soldiers far from bases that offer mental health services.

Indeed, the general says he could use at least 750 more mental health workers in the Army, in addition to the 900 who have been added to the force in the last two years. He says he also needs up to 300 more substance abuse counselors.

“We are an army that is based on authorizations that were prior to eight years of war,” said General Chiarelli. “And I have been pounding the system to say, ‘we have got to sit down and determine what we need after eight years of war.”

The U.S. Army has been focused on mental health issues for several years, but concern was heightened earlier this month when a soldier killed 12 colleagues and one civilian in a shooting rampage on a base in Texas. The alleged gunman is an officer, and a psychiatrist who specializes in stress, and was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan. He is also a Muslim, who is now believed to have militant leanings.

The Army is funding a huge mental health study which will keep track of as many as half a million soldiers during the next five years. It is also implementing a variety of innovative programs designed to make it easier for soldiers to report their own problems, and to help comrades who show signs of being suicidal.

“This is a matter of life and death, and it is absolutely unacceptable to have individuals suffering in silence because they’re afraid their peers or superiors will make fun of them, or worst [that] it will adversely affect their careers,” said the general.

General Chiarelli says soldiers need to realize that mental problems are just like bullet wounds and broken legs, and must be treated by trained professionals. He calls dealing with the Army’s mental health and suicide problems the toughest challenge he has faced in his 37 years of service.

1950 b/w file photo of 10 year old twins Brian Thomas Sullivan (left) and Kevin James Sullivan from Islington, London, who carry their luggage to the boat train ‘Rangitoto’ as they leave Liverpool Street station in London bound for Auckland, New Zealand. Britain and Australia are saying sorry to thousands of British children who were promised a better life overseas, only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home. The British government said Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown will apologize for 20th-century child migrant programs that saw thousands of poor British children sent to Australia, Canada and other former colonies until the 1960s. Many ended up in institutions or were sent to work as farm laborers. (AP Photo / pa File)

Australia apologizes to Brit kids sent to colonies

Associated Press | Nov 16, 2009

by Rod Mcguirk And Jill Lawless

CANBERRA, Australia – When John Hennessey was 10 years old, he was sent from a war-weary Britain to an orphanage in Australia, where he was told food was plentiful and children rode kangaroos to school.

Instead, he was beaten and sexually abused, leaving him emotionally scarred and with a stutter that persists 60 years later.

“There’s no other country in the world that has deported their children to the other side of the world and then abandoned them,” the 72-year-old said before an emotional ceremony Monday in Australia, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for his country’s role in a shameful episode in British colonial history.

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“They stole our innocence,” he added, calling his caretakers in Australia “a ring of pedophiles.”

Rudd acknowledged the deep wounds inflicted by the programs that sent an estimated 150,000 British children to distant colonies — intending to ease pressure on post-World War II Britain’s social services, provide orphaned or abandoned children with a fresh start and supply the empire with a sturdy supply of white workers. Rudd extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the programs who still live in Australia, many of whom grew up in institutions where they were physically and sexually abused or were sent to work as farm laborers.

“We are sorry,” Rudd said. “Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy — the absolute tragedy — of childhoods lost.”

The ceremony at Parliament House comes one day after the British government said Prime Minister Gordon Brown would apologize next year for the child migrant programs, which lasted from 1618 to 1967. After 1920, most of the children went to Australia.

Rudd also apologized to the “forgotten Australians” — children who suffered while in state care during the last century. According to a 2004 Australian Senate report, more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes, orphanages and other institutions during the 20th century. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused.

After Rudd spoke, Hennessey climbed the stage to show the prime minister a framed photograph of his mother, May Mary Hennessey, who handed her 4-week-old son over to nuns at an English Roman Catholic orphanage because she was not married. In 1947, the Irish order of Christian Brothers offered to take care of him and other supposed orphans in Australia.

“They said to us kangaroos will take us to school, there’s food everywhere, and we said: ‘of course we’ll go’ — little did we know it was on the other side of the world,” Hennessey said.

Sparsely populated Australia’s close shave with Japanese invasion during World War II inspired a national motto of “populate or perish” and triggered a wave of Australian government-assisted migration from Europe.

Australia had an immigration policy that favored British and white immigrants until the 1970s.

“The Archbishop met us at Fremantle (in Western Australia),” Hennessey said. “I can still remember his words. He said: ‘Welcome to Australia. We want white stock because we’re terrified of the yellow peril.’”

A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry, meanwhile, noted “a further motive was racist: the importation of ‘good white stock’ was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies.”

When Hennessey arrived in Boys Town orphanage — now an elite private school in the farming village of Bindoon, 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of the western city of Perth — the boys slept for more than a year on thin mattresses and iron beds on verandahs until they built their own dormitories.

“When it rained and was windy, we’d get wet and yet the brothers were inside tucked away in their lovely warm beds,” Hennessey said.

Hennessey said his stutter began with a particularly violent and harrowing assault at the orphanage when he was 12 years old. He was stripped naked and nearly beaten to death by the headmaster for eating grapes he had taken from a vineyard without permission because he was hungry.

“What terrified me most was that in my mind I thought: ‘That’s my father. What’s he doing?’ I had nobody else, and he was the one I’d looked up to,” Hennessey said.

He left Boys Town at the age of 17 and became a house painter and decorator in Campbelltown, 40 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Sydney on the east coast.

After a 13-year search, he was reunited with his mother in England in 1999, when she was 86. She had eventually married, but three pregnancies subsequent to Hennessey’s birth had ended in miscarriages.

Hennessey said he never told his mother, who died in 2005, about the abuse he’d suffered.

“It was bad enough me not being there, but if she realized I was sexually abused and physically abused, you could image how she’d think because she had a guilt complex,” Hennessey said through reddened eyes.

Andrew Murray, a former Australian senator who was sent from Britain to an orphanage in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, called on Australia to pay reparations.

British High Commissioner Valerie Amos said her government had not yet addressed the compensation question, though Britain has been trying to make amends since the late 1990s by funding trips to reunite migrants with their families in Britain.

Brown’s office said officials would consult with representatives of the surviving children before making a formal apology.

RNW | Nov 12, 2009

By Robert Chesal

No prospects for the future, tired of life or suicidal? Anyone who wants to take matters of life and death into their own hands can get plenty of information on how to end it all from the Dutch Right to Die Association (NVVE). The association has made suicide tips available on a new website.

Spokesperson for the association Walburg de Jong says the website is meant to give people information so that they can end their lives in a “humane way without resorting to horrific methods like throwing themselves off a roof or in front of a train.”

But doesn’t that encourage people to commit suicide? Not according to Ms De Jong: “Firstly it is only for members, so people can only enter the site with a log-in code.” You only have access to the site if you are a member, which costs €17.50 per year.

But this appears not to be true. This morning, a number of Radio Netherlands journalists managed to log in to the part of the site with these instructions without the log-in code. The association blames this on human error. After we pointed this out to the association, the site was blocked for non-members.

Step-by-step guide

On the site, the association gives detailed information on medicines which can be used for suicide. It also states in which countries they are available and the names they are known under. The methods are also explained step-by-step. This is from the introduction:

There are two main methods for committing suicide using medicines.

In the second method, you take lethal medicine in combination with sleeping tablets and antiemetics, to prevent vomiting. Death is caused by cardiac arrest or apnoea. The information given here only concerns the second method and is based on reliable data, as far as we know.

Huge demand

There are around 1,500 suicides in the Netherlands every year, a large percentage are committed by people over the age of 60. Ms De Jong: “These are people who say ‘my life is over but I do not have a classifiable illness, so I am not eligible for euthanasia’. Or people who are sick, but whose doctor does not want to use euthanasia.”

In the Netherlands both active euthanasia, when a doctor gives a lethal dose of medicine to end the life of a patient, and assisting suicide fall under criminal law. However, doctors who adhere to strict rules are not prosecuted. The doctor has to be convinced that the patient’s request to end his or her life is voluntary and well-considered. The patient has to be suffering intolerable pain with no prospect for improvement. But where many doctors think this refers to physical pain, the Dutch Right to Die Association thinks mental suffering is an acceptable reason for euthanasia or suicide.

Help with suicide

Truus Hoyinck, member of the NVVE since 1991, thinks it is fine for the association to actively help people commit suicide. “I believe in self-determination. Years ago I ordered the Scottish book with suicide tips. I thought it was awful because it said you had to put a plastic bag over your head and wait until you suffocated. So if there is a better way, I’m all for it.”

Aftercare

Suicide can also go wrong. Under the heading ‘Aftercare’ the suicide website says that should the attempt fail, the association’s support service  “is always prepared to talk about the experience.”

Membership of the Dutch Right to Die Association is open to Dutch people and foreigners. A limited amount of information is available in English on the site, but says – after numerous requests from abroad – that it does not prescribe medicines and does not have doctors who offer euthanasia or other help.

NVVE website

AP | Oct 26, 2009

A groundbreaking, $30 million study into cell phones has found a link between long term use and brain tumors.

The World Health Organization is about to reveal that its decade-long investigation has found the devices can lead to cancer — and the internationally-respected body will soon issue a public health message with its findings, London’s Daily Telegraph reported today.

The conclusion goes against years of assurances by cell phone companies and scientists that cell phone use is safe.

But last month, Sen. Arlen Specter, D- Pa., organized Senate hearings to examine health implications of talking on-the-go.

The WHO’s Interphone investigation’s results showed, “a significantly increased risk” of some brain tumors “related to use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more,” the Telegraph reported.

The study’s head, Dr. Elisabeth Cardis, said, “In the absence of definitive results and in the light of a number of studies which, though limited, suggest a possible effect of radiofrequency radiation, precautions are important.”

WSJ | Oct 28, 2009

By JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF

Antipsychotic drugs widely used in children caused youths to gain as much as 19 pounds on average after just 11 weeks on the medications, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings about the drugs, known as atypical antipsychotics, bolster concerns about giving the medicines to patients under 18 years of age. The study’s authors urged child psychiatrists to exercise caution before deciding to prescribe, and to closely monitor patients taking the drugs.

The powerful drugs are used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They have faced growing scrutiny, not only because of concerns about weight gain that could lead to diabetes, but also because of the aggressive marketing tactics by their makers that have helped make them the highest-selling class of drugs in the U.S.

The study results come as the Food and Drug Administration considers approving younger patients’ use of a few of the drugs. Atypical antipsychotics have limited approval for youths, but doctors are free to prescribe them as they see fit and often give them to children and adolescents, say analysts and psychiatrists.

Psychiatrists turned to the new drugs after they began going on sale in the 1990s because they didn’t cause involuntary facial tics and other problems, as an earlier generation of medicines did. Last year, the drugs collectively generated $14.6 billion in sales in the U.S., according to IMS Health. But a growing number of studies suggest they have their own side effects.

“The weight gain is much larger than we thought,” said Christoph Correll, the study’s lead author, who is a psychiatrist and a scientist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. “It’s massive, and it’s the medication” that caused it, he said.

The JAMA study, conducted in 272 youths ages 4 to 19 years, is the largest and most definitive to date to establish a link between the drugs and weight gain, the authors said. Unlike earlier studies, it looked only at patients who hadn’t previously taken the medicines.

The drugs examined were four top-selling atypical antipsychotics: Abilify, sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co.; Risperdal from Johnson & Johnson; Seroquel from AstraZeneca PLC; and Zyprexa from Eli Lilly & Co.

Zyprexa caused the most weight gain, the study found. Over 11 weeks of use, children on Zyprexa gained the most weight on average, nearly 19 pounds, or a 15% increase. The drug was also found to significantly raise levels of blood sugar, cholesterol, insulin and triglycerides, which can lead to diabetes and heart problems.

Patients taking the other three drugs gained from 10 to 13 pounds on average, according to the study. The impact on users’ blood sugar and other metabolic levels varied, depending on the drug.

The drugs’ makers say that the potential for increased weight gain is well known and that they have already updated labels to reflect possible side effects. Atypical antipsychotics are a valuable treatment option for severe mental illnesses, the companies add, and physicians and parents should weigh the risks from taking the medicines against the benefits.

Should the FDA approve Zyprexa’s use in adolescents, physicians should consider prescribing another drug first, a Lilly spokesman added.

In January, Lilly agreed to pay $1.42 billion to settle a federal probe into alleged improper marketing of Zyprexa. And other pharmaceutical companies have come under fire for allegedly promoting off-label uses of atypical antipsychotics and playing down the side effects.

The connection between the drugs and weight gain is poorly understood. As concerns about the side effects have mounted, prescriptions for children have slowed. Dr. Correll encouraged child psychiatrists to be even more careful about giving the drugs to youths and, when they do, to encourage a healthy diet and to check weight and metabolic levels every three months.

“The onset of the weight gain was so pronounced and so significant there’s probably an argument for doing those measurements every few weeks,” said Christopher Varley, a child psychiatrist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

The FDA will soon decide whether to approve younger patients’ use of Seroquel, Zyprexa and Geodon, another atypical antipsychotic. (Geodon wasn’t part of the study because it’s not often used in new patients and too few users enrolled in the trial, Dr. Corell said.) Each drug is currently FDA-approved for use by adults.

A New Survey of Parents Leaves More Questions About Autism Than Answers

ABC | Oct 5, 2009

By LAUREN COX and SARAH SARGENTI

Parents are reporting cases of autism at double the rate of the last U.S. government survey in 2003, prompting calls for more research and spawning doubts about the true number of children affected.

Researchers estimate that now 1.1 percent, or 1 in 91 children, were told they had a disorder on the autism spectrum, according to a parent survey on the health of more than 78,000 children included in the National Survey of Children’s Health. The last survey, conducted in 2003, estimated just 0.57 percent of children had autism.

But whether a change in diagnosis criteria or some factor in the children’s environment, or a combination of the two, led to the jump in reported cases remains unclear.

“This [survey] means that there are a whole lot of families struggling with this and not enough resources,” said Rita Sheffler, a mother of a child with autism and a member of the National Autism Association. “We need more funding and research and need it right away. If children don’t receive appropriate treatments [at a young age], there aren’t enough facilities for adults and society is not prepared if they do not find meaningful treatments.”

Although many doctors are fighting for research dollars to investigate autism, specialists do not necessarily trust the numbers as an official estimate, especially because the survey wasn’t set up to confirm or explore each time a parent reported an autism diagnosis.

“This should not be the ‘official’ estimate,” said Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at University Hospitals in Cleveland.

“While the authors state that the survey results [and previous surveys] are similar to results of reviews of records, both have a limitation — the assumption that the parent report and the records accurately reflect the diagnosis,” he said

Some of the reporting seemed to match to well-documented statistics, such as the fact that boys were four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls in the survey, a commonly known gender difference in the autism community.

However, the high rate of recovery from autism reported by the parents raised the suspicions of doctors.

Full Story

canada.com | Oct 6, 2009

“Shocking” new autism data released in the U.S. on Monday sent reverberations across the border and renewed calls for Canadian government agencies to get a grip on autism rates in this country.

The U.S. data found the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder has continued to increase, and now affects one per cent of children in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC said it went public with the findings, because they were similar to those published Monday by the Boston-based medical journal Pediatrics, which found that ASD affected one in 91 children — including 1 in 58 boys — in the U.S.

“These data affirm that a concerted and substantial national response is warranted,” said the CDC in a statement.

The published Pediatrics study, done by the Health Resources and Services Administration, surveyed by telephone 78,000 parents with children aged three to 17.

Suzanne Lanthier, of Autism Speaks Canada, said the U.S. data were “shocking” and should motivate Canadian health authorities to focus their energies on dealing with autism.

“We need to start paying attention to that, and putting significant resources into finding out why this is happening,” said Lanthier.

Lanthier said Canada does not have similar national data on domestic autism rates.

Autism advocacy groups in Canada have relied on the previous 1-in-150 rate released by the CDC in 2007, said Lanthier.

“Given what we have seen, there is no reason to believe that Canadian rates would be significantly different from the U.S.,” said Lanthier.

Canadian studies have pegged child ASD rates in Canada at between one in 147 and one in 165.

ASD is a group of developmental disabilities that cause social, communication and behavioural problems. The disabilities include autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder.

The cause of autism is still a matter of debate.