Comorbids and underrepresented populations

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Adults with autism spectrum disorder from underrepresented populations were more likely than white adults with ASD to have cooccurring conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, according to a recent analysis of Medicaid data.

“Racial and ethnic differences in physical health conditions have been documented in studies of the general population and may be attributed to socioeconomic circumstances, discrimination in the health services environment, and/or genetic differences,” Whitney Schott, MA, PhD, an assistant research professor at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and colleagues wrote in Autism Research. “The present analysis seeks to fill a gap in the literature examining racial and ethnic disparities in cooccurring conditions among the autistic adult Medicaid population in the United States.”

The researchers reviewed data from 166,952 adult Medicaid beneficiaries with ASD and 466,851 adult Medicaid beneficiaries without ASD. The dataset included adults from each of the 50 United States. The majority of the individuals in both cohorts were white men.

While smaller studies had a lower prevalence of certain conditions among ASD populations, Schott and colleagues noted that their findings align with a larger study conducted in 2015 of adults with ASD who had private insurance.

“Differences in health condition prevalence among autistic adults in public versus private health insurance are to be expected, as Medicaid likely serves a more vulnerable population,” Schott and colleagues wrote. “Therefore, it is notable that we found similar prevalence of several conditions“.