By Anne Dachel

The Latest on Autism from Dr. Walter Zahorodny at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

First the background:

In June, 2022, Age of Autism published an interview of Dr. Walter Zahorodny from Rutgers University by Wayne Rohde.

Autism Prevalence Since 2000

Dr. Zahorodny is the top expert on the U.S. autism rate and he’s been at it for over 20 years.

I transcribed part of the interview for the article. Zahorodny gave listeners some startling information.

While officially autism affects 2.3 percent of children, according to the CDC, Zahorodny cited findings of ever greater numbers.

Here in Zahorodny’s own words:

San Diego, California, four percent.

Newark, New Jersey, five percent. 

Toms River, New Jersey, seven percent.

One in five towns in New Jersey, in our region, have a rate of five percent or higher….

We have already in Newark and in Toms River eight to 12 percent of boys in the public education system [that] have a lifelong disability or most likely a lifelong disability.

 In Ocean County in 2016, while the overall New Jersey estimate was 3.2 percent, we found that the prevalence of autism was already over five percent in Ocean County. 

I’m not an economist, but do you choose to project five percent or 10 percent as a realistic metric for how many people will need significant, maybe lifetime support?

We could really identify no specific reason why autism prevalence increased, not only in New Jersey, but in every other state in the Network.

And it increased for boys and for girls. It increased for white, black, Hispanic, Asian children. It increased across every state.

In the world of the prevalence estimates of the ADDM Network, we’ve only seen increases.

Throughout that DSM-IV period, only increases. When we shifted to the DSM-5 definition, we also only see increases. …somewhere in the range of one in five children have some learning issue, problem or deficit. The most quickly expanding group is those children with autism. Next most frequently occurring are children with ADHD.

Zahorodny acknowledged that people in power don’t care.

Politicians are not responding because I think they have accepted for the most part the red herring interpretation that autism has always been around.

Zahorodny said that at the CDC, ‘they’re not really concerned with autism prevalence.’  So, the increases are REAL, according to a top scientist, but again, no one cares. Zahorodny called for action.

I guess if I were to do one thing, it would be to identify the environment trigger that can be changed.If we don’t stop this epidemic of autism, Zahorodny warned us:

When we say that five percent of the children in our region have autism, I think that’s a fair metric for anticipating the future scope or perimeters of care for adults, adolescents and  adults.  …

You’re planning for at least five percent of the population to be disabled [with autism].

THE LATEST HAPPENING

Rutgers and Zahorodny have released a new study in which they claim to still be undercounting the autism numbers big time. Incredibly, there is no alarm shown. There never is.

Oct 4, 2023, Study Finds: 1 In 4 Teens May Have An Undiagnosed Case Of Autism, Study Reveals

NEWARK, N.J. — A startling number of autistic teens may be living with their developmental disability in silence, according to new findings. Study authors from Rutgers University report that roughly a quarter of 16-year-olds with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the state of New Jersey still haven’t received a formal diagnosis….

This latest project made use of a method known as active multiple-source surveillance in order to gather what its authors call the best-ever dataset pertaining to ASD prevalence among adolescents in the northeastern New Jersey region.

“We think this is the largest ever study of ASD in this age group, and we hope it helps schools, health care providers and others with information that leads to better understanding and services,” says Walter Zahorodny, an associate professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and lead author of the study, in a university release.

All in all, the study reports 1.77 percent of 16-year-olds in northeastern New Jersey have ASD.

However, the disorder affects more teen boys than girls, more Caucasians than African-Americans or Hispanics, and more high-income adolescents than their low-income peers.

Moreover, researchers report that one in four adolescents with ASD had not been diagnosed and that three in five adolescents with autism also had one or more neuropsychiatric conditions — in most cases attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)….

Zahorodny is talking about real increases in autism.

“This confirms what other studies have found about the relative occurrence of autism by sex, race and socioeconomic status in childhood, and it almost certainly reflects true incidence patterns rather than better diagnosis rates among groups that get more frequent and better medical care,” Prof. Zahorodny explains. “Our study didn’t examine why prevalence rates vary, but other studies suggest a complex interaction of genes and environment.”

Study authors believe that this work’s most important finding may be the identification of a significant number of undiagnosed autism cases, especially among so many young people and adolescents with mild forms of impairment. The observed high percentage of adolescents with ASD who also have another neuropsychiatric disorder also holds major implications moving forward....

While this project was the second of its kind conducted by this research group aimed at analyzing the same group of people, Prof. Zahorodny hopes it won’t be the last.

“We would love to continue studying this same cohort going forward because we know so much less about autism in adulthood,” the study author concludes. “Continuing to follow this group of more than 500 people could greatly add to what is known about ASD and how it is characterized in adulthood, which will, ultimately, lead to the identification of interventions which maximize well-being.”

Unfortunately Dr. Zahorodny doesn’t speculate on what the ‘complex interaction of genes and environment’ causing autism might be. A vague reference to the environment at the end of the article is all that is allowed, I’m sure. That can be easily forgotten.

The only response that’s really called for here is EARLY DIAGNOSING/EARLY INTERVENTION. That’s all  we can really do now.

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.