The average autism continues to rise among children, according to the reports of the Disease Control Center
The percentage of American children is estimated to increase autism spectrum disorder in 2022, and to continue a long -term direction, according to Data released On Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among the 8 -year -old children, one out of 31 with autism was found in 2022, compared to 1 by 36 in 2020. This rate is more than five times the number in 2000, when the agency started collecting data for the first time.
The health agency noted that the increase was likely to be better with awareness and examination, and not necessarily because autism itself has become more common.
This was sharply launched from the country’s discourse, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who said on Tuesday, “The autism epidemic is spreading.”
Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly tried to deliver increasing autism rates to vaccines, though Dozens of studies For decades, it failed to create such a link. However, the Minister of Health began a federal study that would review the possibility and rented a doubtful vaccine in the well -known vaccine to oversee the effort.
Mr. Kennedy recently announced an effort by the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services to determine the “assets of the epidemic” by September, an initiative received by many autistic disease experts.
“It seems unlikely to be the epidemic, the way in which people are determined,” said Catherine Lord, a psychologist and autism researcher at the College of Medicine, David Given at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Lord said that an important part of the increase instead could be attributed to the expansion of the diagnosis over the years to capture more moderate cases, as well as a decrease in shame and greater awareness of support services.
However, she left open possibility that other factors will contribute to the development of more autistic children. “We can calculate a lot of increase, but perhaps not all of it,” said Dr. Lund.
“But whatever it is, it is not vaccines,” she added.
Autism is a nervous growth disorder that is characterized by difficulties with social interactions and communication, sensory issues, interests and repeated behaviors.
While the reasons remain largely unknown, researchers believe that it has a strong genetic component. “It is very unlikely to be one or even a small number of reasons,” said Dr. Lund.
The new data was collected by the Disease Control Center Autism Monitoring Network and Development DisabilitiesWhich used health and education records for more than 274,000 children in 16 sites throughout the country to estimate autism rates.
The spread of this disorder has increased steadily since 2000, when the network began for the first time to follow it.
Other directions were clear in the new research. While white children and children are the wealthiest social and economic areas they have the highest autistic rates in the United States, this trend has turned in 2018.
Starting in 2020, greater proportions of black and Latin children who suffer from autism were found, and no longer see the association with the richer communities.
The Center for Disease Control has been a prevalence rate of 3.7 percent among black children, 3.3 percent among children of Spanish origin and 3.8 percent among American American children, compared to 2.8 percent among white children.
Although autism has long been associated with boys, a difference that may be associated with heredity, girls are now diagnosed at higher rates because awareness has grown about the exact methods that the disorder can show, and often appear more clearly in adolescence years.
The Disease Control Center said that autism was 3.4 times more prevalent in boys than girls in 2022, fell from 3.8 times in 2020.
The data also showed a sudden variation in autism diagnoses according to geography, which ranges between 5.3 percent of the 8 -year -old children in California to less than 1 percent in Texas.
The availability of some medical and educational resources increases the possibility of identifying these children. California, for example, has a program that trains local pediatricians to determine signs of autism at an early age, as well as regional centers that provide autism services.
Pennsylvania, which had the second highest spread rate, has the media government program that guarantees the coverage of children with development disabilities regardless of their parents ’income.