The Sex ratio

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LePetitPrince
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01 Sep 2009, 2:26 pm

LFA girls can't be "misdiagnosed" with social phobia.

So you're saying that AS is not a ASD.

bhetti
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01 Sep 2009, 2:42 pm

LePetitPrince wrote:

bhetti wrote:

speaking of gender-based diseases, why have women always been dx'd with hysteria more often than men? my personal opinion is that it was and is convenient to diagnose someone as having a neurosis than as having a neurological disorder if they don't present as having something familiar. if girls present differently than the studies on boys indicate, it's very likely they'll be given a different dx and might live with it most of their lives.

Hysteria is not a recognized disorder, it's an umbrella of unknown conditions.

The female hysteria is a pseudo-scientific debunked theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria

right. I know that, which is why I brought it up. females who received a diagnosis of hysteria were never properly diagnosed with what they actually had. you think none of them were on the spectrum? even if "hysteria" as a diagnosis has faded away, since diagnostic criteria for spectrum disorders is based on studies done with boys it's probably not appropriate across gender and culture so we still have a problem.

I'm not saying the ratio is 1:1 because I don't know. I'm just saying there isn't enough data to know. LFA girls might be fewer because, as was mentioned earlier, mental retardation is more common in boys. it's a possibility to consider. maybe clinical studies will sort that stuff out in the future.

rdos
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01 Sep 2009, 2:54 pm

I already wrote that the LFA-group could have more boys because genetic disorders usually have higher prevalence in boys than in girls. The big ASC group, the AS/HFA group, is the one were many girls could be diagnosed with social phobia rather than with AS/HFA. And LFA and AS/HFA can be related without having the same gender-ratio.

bhetti
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01 Sep 2009, 2:54 pm

LePetitPrince wrote:

If AS is on ASD spectrum then the sex ratios of the 2 conditions should be similar.

If there are as many Aspie girls as aspie guys then AS is not on ASD, if this is true then AS belongs to nothing , it's a fake disorder.

I don't understand what this supposition is based on or why an equal number of males and females with AS would result in AS being a fake disorder.

bhetti
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01 Sep 2009, 2:58 pm

rdos wrote:

this makes sense. male fetuses have a lower viability in general. I wonder why? I've never bothered to look it up.

AmberEyes
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01 Sep 2009, 3:12 pm

rdos wrote:

Personally, I think the vaste majority of the Aspie girls are (mis)diagnosed with social phobia instead. This is both because social phobia is heavily correlated to ASCs and because we see a skewed gender ratio in the opposite direction for social phobia.

Or depression.
That's an easy diagnosis to give.

There are "shy" systemising females.
I keep noticing this again and again.

Something must be going on AS or not.

I don't know, is "social phobia" actually an outward expression of some deeper issues or social avoidance just a coping mechanism?

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01 Sep 2009, 3:29 pm

Certainly there are other factors involved.

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Tim_Tex
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01 Sep 2009, 3:29 pm

AmberEyes wrote:

Something must be going on AS or not.

I was thinking the same thing.

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Asterisp
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01 Sep 2009, 4:05 pm

bhetti wrote:

I think going to wikipedia as a source is ill-advised no matter what the topic.

I do have some nice articles and a book in my book case, but posting them here is rather difficult. And to be honest, I am a a bit lazy to find a better website

bhetti
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01 Sep 2009, 4:16 pm

Asterisp wrote:

bhetti wrote:

I think going to wikipedia as a source is ill-advised no matter what the topic.

I do have some nice articles and a book in my book case, but posting them here is rather difficult. And to be honest, I am a a bit lazy to find a better website

heh, then I will probably always hassle you on your sources :twisted:

I know for a fact there are fake entries put there to back up an argument. I've also seen enough propaganda posted as factual information that I feel the entire database is suspect as anything but a way to find links to other information.

Peko
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01 Sep 2009, 5:13 pm

PlatedDrake wrote:

Well, following a bit of a genetic thing, males have the XY chromosome set, females are XX. Its been proven in genetics that that vast majority of conditions follow the X chromosome. Thats why its more prevalent in males since we only have the 1 X. Females wont usually show a condition unless its X dominant or X recessive. So, from this point of view, Autism is likely an X recessive trait (also called X - Linked or Sex Linked). This would mean that if a woman's family has a history of the condition (and she happens to have 1 X-recessive Autism trait) and she marries and has children with an autistic male, there is a 50% chance that a daughter will have autism, and the same chance for son.

__|_X_|_X_|
X | XX | XX |
Y | XY | XY |

Just use this basic display, marking the Autism trait to an X only (denote as Xr or Xa, etc.). What you will see is that a woman without the trait, and a father who has it: Sons will not inherit the trait, but daughters will become carriers. If a mother has the condition (say she's XaXa) and a father who isnt: Sons have a 100% chance of autism, but daughters become carriers. Now, i support this idea, but something came to me. There is an autistic woman (Liane Holliday Willey, also an Aspie and author of "Pretending to be Normal") who has a son and twin daughters. The son and the first twin daughter are fine, but the other twin has the condition. With this, and its quite possible, the recessive trait responsible for autism could be environmentally triggered, since the second twin had a difficult birth. With that in mind, i think that the autism spectrum is our evolutionary defense to prevent or decrease the chances of severe mental handicaps early in life/development. With that in mind, you could praise your "condition" for saving your life. Thoughts, or other observations?

Thank You Autism!

That definitely could apply in my case. Long story short, I had traumatic birth issues (I was born having seizures, not breathing & put on a respirator for 48 hrs. Couldn't go home 'til I lasted 5 days straight seizure free (it took 11 days), which led my mother to get me all kinds of therapy from birth & resulted in my being diagnosed with autism by 18 months than re-diagnosed with PDD.

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01 Sep 2009, 5:29 pm

I don't think it's actually that the ratio is necessarily 1:1 but that it's just closer to that than is diagnosed. Like you said, the sex ratio for LFA is 2:1, so why couldn't that be the actual sex ratio for AS too? It still leaves an awful lot of undiagnosed and/or misdiagnosed girls.
As far as I know no genes for autism have been located yet, so it could be X-linked, or it could be an autosomal trait that's more likely to be triggered in the presence of more testosterone. (OMG, why does the spellchecker not recognize the word "autosomal"? I Googled it and the spelling IS correct!) It could also be a lot more complicated than that-- most traits don't follow straight Mendelian inheritance. It's just that when you learn genetics, especially at lower levels, Mendelian traits are easiest to study, so that's what's most well-known. Most inherited traits are actually based on multiple genes and environmental factors.

bhetti
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01 Sep 2009, 5:48 pm

perhaps more accurate numbers could be obtained if intellectual disability were measured separately from autism. if mental retardation is more commonly a male disability, then it's going to skew the numbers if its co-morbidity with autism results in LFA.

PlatedDrake
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01 Sep 2009, 6:33 pm

Sorry, forgot to add a bit more to Mrs. Willey's second twin daughter. That one had complications at birth, wasnt breathing or something like that. In my case, i was born about a month early (premature i believe, depending on how early that title is considered a label), had jaundice, and FTT (failure to thrive). I also experienced chicken pox early on (was too young to know how to scratch and could only scream in pain from the sores). Any one or combination of these occurrences were a possible factor.

Back to the subject at hand, here are some of the conditions which shows that Autistic males would be more common: (Xa denotes autism related gene, be it a triggered gene or not, and the carrier connotation [XaX] for females represents a gene that may or may not be visibly expressed in the mother).

Carrier mother: Sons, 50%; Daughters: 50% Carrier
__| Xa | X |
X | XXa | XX |
Y | XaY | XY |

Autistic Mother: Sons: 100%, Daughters: 100% Carrier
__| Xa | Xa |
X|XaX|XaX|
Y|XaY |XaY|

Autistic Father: Sons: 0%, Daughters: 100% Carrier
__| X | X |
Xa| XaX | XaX |
Y | XY | XY |

Autistic Father, Carrier Mother: Sons: 50%; Daughters: 50% Carrier, 50% Autistic
__| Xa | X |
Xa|XaXa| XaX |
Y | XaY | XY |

Autistic Father and Mother: Sons and Daughters 100%

So, lets suppose that for every 50% expression (excluding carriers since the expression may or may not be activated) represents 1 point, this shows 6 points towards the males, and 3 points for females. 6:3 is definitely a 2:1 ratio as far as possible occurrences. I know this is a -VERY- rough example of how the expression would work, but visibly, it does favor the 2:1 ratio

oppositedirection
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02 Sep 2009, 2:35 pm

Always been suspicious, since I've met three autistic females and yet only one autistic male beyond myself.

While it's likely that what 'ultimately' causes LFA and AS is likely to be similar, the differences between the two may very much come from further causes occurring or not. And it could easily be those further causes responsible for LFA which create the gender difference in LFA, and since AS lacks those causes it therefore should lack the gender divide. Hence gender difference in LFA would not suggest similar gender divide in AS. Not that I'm endorsing this opinion, I'm just suggesting caution as we don't know how completely related LFA is to AS.

I've been thinking a lot about how we conceptualise causation in psychiatry lately...

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02 Sep 2009, 2:54 pm

LePetitPrince wrote:

2- Not sure about the west' society, but at least where I live, girls are more expected to be social , earlier expected to be mature, more expected how to converse and more expected to know "how to be behave correctly". Even if shyness is more expected from girls, shyness does not equate social ineptness at all. All those expectations should make aspie girls more noticeable than any other , yet the ratio is about the same.

I agree with this (am female). I don't think that the ideas that Aspie girls are likely to be supported and 'mothered' by their peer group are true at all. That may happen with a girl who is simply shy, but, as you say, we are not talking about simple shyness here. If you do not understand how to behave, socially, you are being set up for near total rejection by other females from a fairly young age.

My belief is that men are more likely to value companions by what they can practically contribute to the group, so an Aspie boy may actually do better with his peers than a girl would if he possesses a knowledge or skill that is seen as useful by them, even if he has great social difficulties. They may still tease him, but they would accept him to a degree. Whereas being able to mentally and emotionally relate is valued in a female group, so practical skills will not help a girl if she gets it socially wrong.

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