Evidence of increasing recorded diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in Wales, UK – an e-cohort study

Underwood, Jack F. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1731-6039, DelPozo-Banos, Marcos, Frizzati, Aura, John, Ann and Hall, Jeremy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2737-9009 2022. Evidence of increasing recorded diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in Wales, UK – an e-cohort study. Autism 26 (6) , pp. 1499-1508. 10.1177/13623613211059674

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Abstract

Estimates place the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (autism) at around 1% in the population. New services for adult diagnosis have been set up in Wales, UK, at a time of ris-ing awareness of the spectrum of autism experiences, however no studies have examined adult autism prevalence in Wales. In this study we use an anonymised e-cohort comprised of healthcare record data to produce all-age estimates of prevalence and incidence of record-ed autism for the years 2001-2016. We found the overall prevalence rate of autism in healthcare records was 0.51%. The number of new-recorded cases of autism increased from 0.188 per 1000 person-years in 2001 to 0.644 per 1000 person-years in 2016. The estimate of 0.51% prevalence in the population is lower than suggested by population survey and co-hort studies study methodologies, but comparable to other administrative record study es-timates. Rates of new incident diagnoses of autism saw a >150% increase in the years 2008-2016, with a trend towards more diagnoses in those over 35 and an eightfold increase in diagnoses in women from 2000-2016. Our study suggests that while the number of people being diagnosed with autism is increasing, many are still unrecognised by healthcare ser-vices.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute (NMHRI) Medicine
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Additional Information:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1362-3613
Funders:	Wellcome Trust (Grant 222849/Z/21/Z), Healthcare Research Wales (CA04), Medical Research Council (MC_PC_17212), Medical Research Council (MC_PC_17211)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 December 2021
Date of Acceptance:	11 October 2021
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2023 20:39
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/144827

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