Seizure disorders in autism.

Several reports have suggested that autistic individuals are at greater risk for developing seizure disorders, particularly in adolescence. In this study the frequency of seizures in a series of 192 autistic individuals was examined; 21% of cases had exhibited a seizure disorder. Seizure disorders were more common among individuals with lower IQ.

Disintegrative disorder or "late onset" autism.

Ten cases of disintegrative disorder were identified within a larger sample of 165 individuals who met behavioral criteria for autism. These cases were compared to autistic individuals whose disorder had been recognized by age 2 and to those whose disorder had been recognized after age 2. Consistent with previous reports, children with disintegrative disorder had a period of normal development preceding the onset of a profound developmental regression from which they made, at best, only a limited recovery.

Facial perception in autism.

Disturbances in gaze and patterns of facial interaction are prominent aspects of social dysfunction in autism; the nature of this disturbance has up to the present been unclear. This study examined the ability of autistic subjects to use the human face as a source of information. Autistic and age- and MA-matched retarded control subjects assembled a series of puzzles displaying photographs of human faces; puzzles differed in complexity, familiarity of the faces and configuration (normal vs scrambled faces).

Neurochemical study of dopamine functioning in autistic and normal subjects.

Plasma prolactin (PRL) and homovanillic acid (HVA) levels, and urinary HVA and dopamine (DA) excretion, were measured in groups of unmedicated autistics, medicated autistics, and normal controls. No significant differences were found between unmedicated autistics and normal controls in plasma PRL and HVA levels. Excretion rates of urinary HVA and DA were also similar in the unmedicated autistic and normal subjects.

Whole blood serotonin and tryptophan in autism: temporal stability and the effects of medication.

Whole blood serotonin (5-HT) was significantly increased in a drug-free autistic group (n = 17) compared to age- and sex-matched normal control (n = 20). Blood tryptophan (TRP) values and platelet counts were similar in unmedicated autistics and normal subjects; but whole blood concentrations of TRP were significantly lower, and 5-HT values tended to be lower in the medicated group compared to unmedicated autistics. Highly significant intraclass correlation coefficients and low mean percentage differences were found for repeated measures over a year's period of whole blood 5-HT and the platelet count in the unmedicated but not in the medicated group.

An examination of social typologies in autism.

A system proposed by Wing and coworkers for subtyping autistic individuals on the basis of social interaction is examined in 78 autistic, 39 atypical, and 32 nonautistic, developmentally disordered individuals. Clinical ratings and questionnaire data based on the proposed subtypology were employed. Clinicians were able to reliably group both autistic and nonautistic cases into the three subtypes; these subtypes were strongly related to IQ.

DSM-III and DSM-III-R diagnoses of autism.

The authors examined the reliability, sensitivity, and specificity of DSM-III and DSM-III-R criteria for autism in relation to each other and to clinical diagnoses in 114 children and adults (52 diagnosed by clinicians' best judgment as autistic and 62 as nonautistic but developmentally disordered). They used a standard, structured coding scheme to evaluate each patient. The reliability of specific criteria was generally high.

An evaluation of the Autism Behavior Checklist.

The Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC), an assessment instrument for autistic individuals, was evaluated in a group of 157 subjects, 94 clinically autistic and 63 nonautistic. The two groups differed significantly in ratings of pathology. Both false positive and false negative diagnostic classifications were made when the results of the checklist were compared with clinical diagnosis.

Phenomenology and classification of the childhood psychoses.

Two hundred and twenty-eight cases of children with final clinical diagnoses of childhood psychosis were reviewed using a standard coding scheme; cases were grouped in three broad categories on the basis of clinical diagnosis (autistic, atypical and schizophreniform). These three groups differed significantly in many respects, although the 'atypical' group more closely resembled the autistic group. While it was possible meaningfully to differentiate diagnostic groups using DSM-III criteria, some cases were difficult to classify.

[The classification of pervasive developmental disorders and other disorders: toward the DSM-IV].

Forty years after Kanner's groundbreaking work and many publications later, the outlook for children with autism has not changed markedly. Progress in understanding the etiology, let alone in developing new approaches for treatment, has been extremely slow for this and other serious, early onset disturbances. Historically, disagreements over diagnosis and syndrome definition have impeded research efforts.

Whole blood serotonin in autistic and normal subjects.

Whole blood serotonin and tryptophan were measured in 87 normal subjects and in 40 autistic subjects. Whole blood serotonin concentrations (mean +/- SE) were significantly higher in drug-free (N = 21) autistics (205 +/- 16 ng/ml) than in normals (136 +/- 5.4 ng/ml).

Urinary 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid and whole blood serotonin and tryptophan in autistic and normal subjects.

Urinary 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) excretion in two consecutive collection periods (5:00 PM-11:00 PM and 11:00 PM-8:00 AM) and whole blood serotonin (5-HT) and tryptophan (TRP) were measured in groups of unmedicated autistics (n = 16), medicated autistics (n = 20), and normal controls (n = 27). Whole blood 5-HT values were significantly higher in unmedicated autistics compared to normal controls. No significant differences were found in 5-HIAA excretion (microgram/mg creatinine, mean +/- SD) between unmedicated autistics (4.

Clinical features of autistic children with setback course in their infancy.

This study examines the incidence rate of setback in 80 autistic children, the correlation between the type of onset and clinical features, developmental level and prognosis based on an originally developed questionnaire. Moreover, this study seeks to investigate the possibility that infantile autism might be classified into subgroups by the type of onset. 1) The acquired (including questionably acquired) group consisted of 39 cases (49%), while the natal group was made up of 41 cases (51%).

Current concepts: infantile autism and the pervasive developmental disorders.

The pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), as exemplified by infantile autism, are a group of severe childhood neuropsychiatric disorders of early onset in which multiple areas of social, communicative, and cognitive development are disturbed. Although these disorders often are associated with some degree of mental retardation and various medical and neurological abnormalities, they are distinctive in their course and outcome, and in the patterns of development deficit. These conditions, which are expressed as the final behavioral syndrome, probably have many different causes.