Health profiles of adults with autism spectrum disorder: Differences between women and men.
Leann Smith DaWalt, Julie Lounds Taylor, Arezoo Movaghar and 4 others
PMID 34213066WHAT IT FOUND
Women with autism had more recorded health care use for nutrition, neurologic, psychiatric and sleep problems than men with autism, beyond what being female and having autism separately explained.
Adults with autism also had more recorded conditions than matched controls.
Key findings
01Adults with ASD were more likely than controls to have recorded conditions in six domains. Neurological conditions were the only prevalence domain where the sex difference was larger in the ASD group than in the control group.
02Women with ASD had more recorded health care use than men with ASD in nutrition, neurologic, psychiatric and sleep domains, beyond what being female and having ASD separately would predict.
03For psychiatric conditions, women with ASD averaged 72 diagnostic codes, men with ASD averaged 54, and both control groups had fewer than 20.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The data were from clinical and billing records, not research assessments, so the number of codes may reflect coding habits, provider behavior or access to care rather than true health differences. The sample came from a rural Wisconsin health system and had limited racial and ethnic diversity. The analysis grouped many diagnostic codes into broad domains, so it cannot identify specific conditions or the reason for the sex difference. Women with autism were disproportionately more likely to be deceased in the sample, and the study did not examine mortality. The age range was wide, so participants experienced different diagnostic and treatment eras. Health care use was analyzed only among patients with at least two codes in a domain, so it does not describe patients with fewer than two codes. It compared existing records, not assigned treatments, so it cannot show cause.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural. The supplied article text does not include an author conflict-of-interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autism causes more health care use or that women with autism have worse health in all domains. The study compared diagnostic codes in existing records, and cardiovascular and endocrine domains showed no clear differences.