Psychotropic Medication Use among Insured Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Jeanne M Madden, Matthew D Lakoma, Frances L Lynch and 7 others
PMID 27817163WHAT IT FOUND
Nearly half of insured children with autism spectrum disorder took a psychotropic medication in 2010, 48.5%.
They were 11.4 times more likely to be treated than matched peers without autism. This describes prescribing, not proven benefit.
Key findings
0148.5% of children with ASD took psychotropic medications, and children with ASD were 11.4 times more likely to be treated than peers without ASD.
02The most prevalent classes among children with ASD were medications that typically target ADHD (30.2%), antipsychotics (20.5%), antidepressants (17.8%), and mood stabilizers (9.1%).
03Use of the four major psychotropic classes among children with ASD was 5.7% in pre-school children, 39.0% in school-aged children, and 59.1% in adolescents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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 study used administrative claims and medical record data, so it did not confirm whether each autism spectrum disorder diagnosis or psychiatric comorbidity was valid. It did not know why each medication was prescribed, so medications could have been used for non-psychiatric reasons. It counted medications dispensed, not medications actually taken. It did not measure severity of impairment, signs, symptoms, or functional outcomes. The main autism spectrum disorder cohort required recent diagnoses, so children with older diagnoses were not included in the primary comparison. The sample came from five US health systems, was mostly privately insured, and included only children with health system contact, so results may not apply to other children.
Declared interests
All authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the high medication use as evidence that these drugs are effective for core autism spectrum disorder symptoms. The study counted medications dispensed, not outcomes, and the paper states evidence for many classes is mixed or lacking.