| HeraldNet - Snohomish County's online news source |
 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2009 8:26 pm |
ADVERTISEMENT |
|||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
Local News 
|
||||||||||||
Autism rate on a steep climb The number of children diagnosed with autism is going up, and no one knows why.One recent study, based on a survey of parents, reported that about one in 91 children ages 3 to 17 had autism, including milder forms such as Asperger's syndrome, according to the medical journal Pediatrics. “When you start talking about 1 percent of the population — and for boys almost 2 percent of the population — that's an extraordinarily common occurrence,” said Dr. Bryan King, director of the autism center at Seattle Children's Hospital. Over the past two decades, studies have found a striking increase in the prevalence of autism in children — from five per 10,000 to 110 per 10,000 — about a twentyfold increase, he said. “That is a breathtaking number,” King said. “This is a very common condition.” But is the increase really caused by more children having autism or is it due to people more carefully looking for the symptoms that may signal the disease? “That's the $64,000 question everybody is asking,” he said. “There's no way to get at the answer for that.” One trend that has been constant, even as the number of children with autism has grown, is that the rate is higher among boys than girls, King said. Since media outlets have been report on autism issues frequently, parents and physicians are now much more likely to recognize its symptoms, King said. Demand for services also has been spurred by the increasing awareness that the earlier autism is detected, the better the treatment and outcome can be. Yet both these trends mean that parents and children often face long waits for both initial diagnosis and treatment. Several hundred families are now on the waiting list for both an initial evaluation and services at Children's, he said. University of Washington researchers are studying infants as young as 6 months, looking for its early signs, said Erin Olson, a behavior specialist at Providence Children's Center in Everett. Children can be reliably diagnosed by age 3, and sometimes as young as 18 months, she said. Some of those signals: If children don't respond to their name, if they don't like to be held, and they struggle with noise or confusion and don't make eye contact. Parents can contact the Snohomish County Infant Toddler Early Intervention Program for a free evaluation, said Christy Tipton, manager of children and family services at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. Everett's Festival of Trees helps raise money to pay for an annual summer camp for children with disabilities, including autism, she said. About 20 percent of children at that camp have autism, Tipton said. Children with autism can have communication disorders and trouble processing language. So they're taught other skills to help them, Tipton said. For example, the child may use sign language or pictures to help them communicate their needs. Autism can cause a wide spectrum of disabilities, Tipton said, and children can get “any number of combinations” of problems. “You have to treat each one of these children very individually,” she said. “I think what's frustrating for parents is they'll say, ‘My nephew has autism and just needs a little help with communication and I have a son who can't feed himself.'” King said he is hopeful that more answers soon will be found to help children with autism. An increasing amount of research money is being spent on autism, including studies by the National Institutes of Health, he noted. And more and people are joining the ranks of autism research “to try to have an impact and make a difference in the lives of these children and young people,” he said. The result of both these efforts is that new types of medical and behavioral interventions are being developed “that look like they hold substantial promise for improving the development outcomes of these kids,” King said. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
|
|
| TODAY'S TOP JOBS |
| View All Top Jobs |
| Top Cars |
|
| Top Homes |
|
|
ADVERTISEMENT |
|
|
|Contact Us
|Advertiser Services
|Home Delivery
|Newsstand Locations
|Classifieds
|Feedback
|About the Company
|Work@the Herald
|Site Map |
|