Response from T. Attwood about stature

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30 Dec 2007, 5:46 pm

I'm 5'2" and have a somewhat small head. The shortest other member of my family was 5'6.5" at her tallest (a woman) and everyone else in the family is tall and/or was tall at their tallest (spine problems also seem to run in the family so people end up shorter with time). My autistic brother is tall and has a big head. I'm not.

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KingdomOfRats
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30 Dec 2007, 6:29 pm

alphacent wrote:

I have initiated a couple forums in the past about a correlation between Asperger's Syndrome and tall stature. So, I decided to ask the expert, Tony Attwood, about any possible correlation. Here is his response:

Thank you for the message and very important question. The answer is yes, there is an association between Asperger’s syndrome and stature. From my clinical experience, many of the children and adolescents that I see are considerably taller than their age peers and recent research by Cheryl Dissanayake published in 2006 (Development and Psychopathology, 18, 381-393) confirms a link between growth in stature and Aspergers. This can include a larger head circumference in early childhood and larger brain but we do not know why. You can pass on this information to the ‘Wrong Planet’ forum.

Best Wishes

Tony

Does this also apply to Kanner/classic autism?
Am female,kanner,and six ft-maybe even over that now as it was measured around eighteen,dad has aspergers,and looks the same size,sister is 'on the spectrum' and looks taller than both,dad said Alan Jr [cousin,teenage],kanners is now well over six ft,but mum [NT] seems very short.
Guess it must be a hard one to specifically say it's come from ASD just judging by family?

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dawndeleon
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30 Dec 2007, 6:49 pm

Hmmm. dont know... i am smaller than even the average person in my family. I am short for my age and my gender. Only five ft tall. i also have really large eyes and look like a kid. Seems like both sides of the height scale are affected there.

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30 Dec 2007, 7:09 pm

Here is the abstract for the study Mr. Attwood referred to in his response.
Growth in stature and head circumference in high-functioning autism and Asperger disorder during the first 3 years of life
CHERYL DISSANAYAKE a1 c1 , QUANG M. BUI a1 , RICHARD HUGGINS a1 and DANUTA Z. LOESCH a1
a1 La Trobe University

Abstract
Little effort has been made to characterize the developmental anatomic phenotype of autism; although there is evidence of an increased head circumference and brain size, few other physical characteristics have been studied. The head circumference, body length/height, and weight measurements of infants, who were later diagnosed with high-functioning autism (HFA, n = 16) and Asperger disorder (AsD, n = 12), were extracted from health records over the first 3 years of life and compared to the measurements of a matched normal control group (n = 19). Using linear mixed-effects models, no differences were found in the average growth rate for head circumference, stature, or weight between the children with HFA and AsD. However, a significantly higher growth rate in body length/height and weight was found for the combined group of children with HFA and AsD compared to the normal control group. A trend toward higher growth rate in head circumference was also found among the former group. The results indicate that growth dysregulation in autism is not specific to the brain but also involves growth in stature.

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30 Dec 2007, 8:36 pm

I'm short (5' 1") with an average head size.

Norah_W
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30 Dec 2007, 8:59 pm

alphacent wrote:

Wow, I was always tall for my age as a child, though I'm only 5'7" now, which isn't overly tall for a woman. I reached my full height at about 12 though. Plus I've always had a large head--I can't really wear regular woman's hats and if I want a winter hat to really fit I have to knit or crochet it myself.

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30 Dec 2007, 9:27 pm

I had a massive head at birth; I kinda grew into it.

I'm six-one in height now, that's above average; my head is a little above average now, not much though.

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30 Dec 2007, 10:09 pm

My boys and I were all tall babies/kids. I don't know about my head but theirs are big.

Hope they never read this.

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30 Dec 2007, 11:22 pm

nzfiona wrote:

I'm a tad shorter than average - 5' 4" / 163 cm - but have been this height since I was 12. Although not the tallest in my class in early high school (age 11 to 13), I was considered fairly tall. By the end of school I was well-overtaken by other girls.

I am similar. I am 5'6" and have been this height since about 12. I was always a larger child and I also started puberty fairly early (9 and then period at 10). So along with the other girls who had similar profiles, we were the tall ones in the class. But the end of grade school once all the other girls had started puberty and got their growth spurts, I was average.

I know some researchers are looking into higher IGF-1 levels in autism-- although I don't know if there's enough replicated findings to say anything assuredly. But IGF-1 is what triggers growth.

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autism_diva
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30 Dec 2007, 11:40 pm

alphacent wrote:

I don't remember if the Dissanayake paper was about boys and girls, but my experience has been that there are lots of very small ASD women, and lots of very tall ASD males and some very tall ASD females. I think the very small women outnumber the very tall women, but that's a guess. I'm one of the tall ones. I have one Very Tall kid and one very small kid.

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lupin
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31 Dec 2007, 6:52 am

All my family are way over average height, just about all are on the spectrum somewhere.

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