Statistics for autistic population over time?

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I know similar questions have been asked here but I could not find any statistics on the numbers of people with autism and aspergers increasing over time. Could anyone post links to these somewhere on the web please? Even if it's just US / UK etc. I would be interested in learning about the detection rates and how much it's gone up.

There are none and won't be for several years yet, because AS wasn't in the DSM until 1994. Before then, nobody was looking for it, so anyone who went through the school system before the mid nineties only gets diagnosed if they find out about AS by accident and are fortunate enough to have access to an opportunity to be evaluated, and even then, they have to have enough interest and motivation to WANT to be diagnosed.

So right now, there are at the very least thousands and possibly even millions of adults just in Western Countries alone who have AS but either don't know they have it, or no one compiling data knows about them. I don't see that changing very soon, since anyone diagnosed as soon as the DSM began to list it would just now be about 18 to 20 years old.

To get data like that, you'd have to know where all us autistic adults were in order to poll us and find out what we've been going through all these years.


I will tell you however, IMO the numbers are probably NOT increasing. If you could diagnose and count all the undiagnosed Aspie adults wandering around out in the world, you'd probably find there are no more or less of them (on average) than there are Aspie adolescents and teenagers.

Try the following articles (and references contain therein):

"Prevalence of autism-spectrum conditions: UK school-based population study"
by Simon Baron-Cohen, et al.
The British Journal of Psychiatry (2009) 194: 500-509. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.108.059345
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/194/6/500

"Epidemiology of autistic disorder and other pervasive developmental disorders."
by E. Fombonne
J Clin Psychiatry. 2005;66 Suppl 10:3-8.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16401144
http://autism.bibliomaker.ch/BM_DIRECTO ... 5/FOM3.PDF

"The Changing Epidemiology of Autism"
by Eric Fombonne
Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, Volume 18, Issue 4, pages 281–294, December 2005. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-3148.2005.00266.x
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 266.x/full

"The Rise in Autism and the Role of Age at Diagnosis"
by Irva Hertz-Picciotto, & Lora Delwiche
Epidemiology: January 2009 - Volume 20 - Issue 1 - pp 84-90
doi: 10.1097/EDE.0b013e3181902d15
http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract ... at.16.aspx
http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/cceh/Epipaper1208.pdf

"Diagnostic change and the increased prevalence of autism"
by Marissa King and Peter Bearman
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1224-1234; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp261.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1224?etoc
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/38/5/1245.pdf
Also see the associated commentaries:
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1234-1238; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp256.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1234?etoc
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1238-1239; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp257.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1238?etoc
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1239-1241; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp258.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1239?etoc
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1241-1242; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp259.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1241?etoc
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1243-1244; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp263.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1243?etoc
Int. J. Epidemiol. 2009 38: 1245-1254; doi:10.1093/ije/dyp260.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... /1245?etoc

"Systematic review of prevalence studies of autism spectrum disorders"
by J G Williams, J P T Higgins, C E G Brayne
Arch Dis Child 2006;91:8-15 doi:10.1136/adc.2004.062083
http://adc.bmj.com/content/91/1/8.short
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2083083/


To find more published research, try searching with
http://scholar.google.com
and/ or
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/

none of the stats are accurate