Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/uoc--asc052820.php

News Release 28-May-2020
University of California - Davis Health

During early childhood, girls with autism tend to show greater reduction and less rise in their autism symptom severity than boys with autism, a UC Davis MIND Institute study has found.

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"We found that nearly 30% of young children have less severe autism symptoms at age 6 than they did at age 3. In some cases, children lost their autism diagnoses entirely," said David Amaral, a distinguished professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, faculty member at the UC Davis MIND Institute and senior author on the study.

"It is also true that some children appear to get worse," Amaral said. "Unfortunately, it is not currently possible to predict who will do well and who will develop more severe autism symptoms and need different interventions."

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One possible explanation for this difference is the girls' ability to camouflage or hide their symptoms, according to Waizbard-Bartov. Camouflaging the characteristics of autism includes masking one's symptoms in social situations. This coping strategy is a social compensatory behavior more prevalent in females diagnosed with ASD compared to males with ASD across different age ranges, including adulthood.

"The fact that more of the girls appear to have decreased in autism severity may be due to an increasing number of girls compared to boys who, with age, have learned how to mask their symptoms," Waizbard-Bartov said. "We will explore this possibility in future studies."

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The study also found that IQ had a significant relationship with change in symptom severity. Children with higher IQs were more likely to show a reduction in ASD symptoms.

"IQ is considered to be the strongest predictor of symptom severity for children with autism," Waizbard-Bartov said. "As IQ scores increased from age 3 to age 6, symptom severity levels decreased."

The researchers could not identify a relationship between early severity levels and future symptom change. Surprisingly, the group of children with increased symptom severity at age 6 showed significantly lower severity levels at age 3, and their severity scores were less variable than the other groups.

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