Was Childhood Disintegrative Disorder ever real?

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When CDD was a valid diagnosis- was it a real thing- or was it just parents thinking their child regressed? And is autistic regression real?

I think autism regression is real. Why wouldn't it be? But I wonder why it happens to some children. Some were perfectly normal and healthy and developing on time and hitting their milestones and doing NT things a normal NT baby would do and then bam they lose all their skills and start developing autism.

I always wondered if CDD was behind a lot of the claims of kids suddenly developing autism after being vaccinated.

I don't see why it wouldn't be real. I assume the autism was always technically there, but just hiding in the shadows, so to speak. No idea if that's true (maybe someone else can come confirm or deny this) but I also didn't think you could suddenly just develop autism after birth.

Autistic regression seems real, there are brain changes prior to earliest noticeable behavioral changes.
There are probably differences between autism from birth vs. later-onset autism following these changes.

I thought it was still a valid diagnosis. I suppose that it was assimilated into Autism Spectrum Disorder as well.

At any rate, no syndromic diagnosis is real; they are all psychomedical constructs in the sense that, while the individual symptoms occur naturally, they are not naturally combined into a single concept.

Rhett Syndrome.

Rett Syndrome is different. Mostly girls/women have it.

I find Childhood Disintegrative Disorder to be valid.

Developmental regression in children with autism is definitely a real thing.

My own theory is that this is related to the way that autistic brains appear to keep rewiring themselves longer than NT brains do. There were definitely some "rewiring" moments in my childhood, and I've read others' descriptions that fit with that as well... If that's what's going on, it makes sense that -- just as with other kinds of rewiring -- once in a while things might go badly wrong and leave the brain in a much less functional condition than it was before.

As to whether childhood disintegrative disorder is "real" in the sense of being something qualitatively distinct from the rest of the autistic spectrum -- the debate is definitely ongoing. But here is a pertinent paragraph from a very recent survey article looking at the DSM-4 to DSM-5 changes:

Childhood disintegrative disorder is another term for regressive autism. And that is definitely real, but rare. People will tell you it is "new and alarming" but in fact Dr. Asperger described regression in some of his young patients in the 1930s.

When you have questions like this, one place to look for answers is the Pubmed database at the National Institutes of Health. While you need a subscription to read the articles in full, you can search for articles on any subject and read the abstracts for free. Most colleges have Pubmed subscriptions, so you may also be able to read the articles through a college library account.

I am under the impression that a lot of cases of CDD are the result of a rare neurodegenerative condition or disease like Juvenile Onset Tay Sachs, which free range big enzymes progressively destroy the CNS in Lebanese children and Tuberous Scerlious/TSC with tumors growing in the brain. These are labeled as associated conditions of CDD in the cause section in the Wikipedia article about CDD. Also ICD10 on F84.3 criteria for CDD says that it is caused by an associated progressive condition, like Tuberous Scerlious or Juvenile Onset Tays Sachs Disease. Theodore Heller, who discovered CDD in 1908, found her patients who were at a state of what you call, "LFA" at the time he studied them. He found that a couple of his patients in the few years ahead deteriorated to an even worse state and died at a very young age, presumably from a Neurodegenerative Disease like Tay-Sachs.
Some doctors consider CDD a super saiyan version of autism, others consider it either a disease by itself or a Childhood dementia. I say it is less related to autism even tough CDD and autism are quite similar, but history of development is prime determination. But with the recessive cases of classic autism, it would seem nearly impossible to distinguish Classic Autism with regressive onset at age 2-3 with CDD with onset at ages 2-3. I myself, was a normal kid until I regressed at age 2 1/2 years old. Putting me at that age, with a kid who regressed into CDD at age 2 1/2 in the same room, you would find just about no difference. Between the time I regressed and the time I made significant improvement at ages 5 and 6( when I spoke and was diagnosed with Aspergers), I had also fit the criteria for Childhood Disintegrative Disorder in addition to Kanner's Autism with regression. But today, if you put me in the same room as someone with Aspergers Syndrome who had no speech delay, you would find no difference at all.