Autism is a disorder that starts early in the childhood and stays until adulthood. It has now been known that many conditions are considered co morbid to autism spectrum disorders. These conditions are variable but some of the most common ones include fragile X syndrome and epilepsy. Furthermore, it is noted that autism most likely affects areas such as communication, social interaction and behavior of the person. Therefore, there is a strong tendency for the person to develop different psychiatric disorders. Some of the common disorders that are linked with autism include attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, anxiety disorders, and bipolar disorder. Many researchers also went onto look into chromosomal abnormalities in children who are affected with autism. Due to this reason, syndrome association such as fragile X syndrome was also discovered. This research goes on to show that Autism is co morbid with many psychiatric conditions such as ADHD, and OCD (Simonoff et.al, 2008; Leyfer et. al, 2006) Furthermore, a positive correlation has also been noted between autism and increased immunological response in the gastrointestinal tract (Lau et.al, 2013) It was also noted that children who are autistic are also likely to develop childhood onset schizophrenia (Rapoport et, al, 2009) and seizures (Valvo et.al, 2013)

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder and autism are the terms that allocated for a mixture of different disorders of brain development. These disorders are basically organized by differing levels of communication, repetitive behaviors and social interaction. In short, ASD is a disorder that goes on to affect the intellectual ability of a person. Seeing how it is detected early in life, children with autism have flawed motor coordination. Furthermore, these children also present with attention problems and physical health issues such as gastrointestinal problems and sleeping issues.

It is noted that autism tends to develop in children very early when the brain is developing. It is not clear as to what causes Autism. Seeing how common autism is now, there is a lot of research being carried out in that department. Along with figuring out the causes of autism, researches are also being conducted to figure out the relation between autism and other co morbidities. The following discussion will shed light on how autistic children are more likely to develop certain diseases with time.

Psychiatric disorders in children with autism spectrum disorders: prevalence, co morbidity and associated factors in a population-derived sample.

Simonoff E, Pickles A, Charman T, Chandler S, Loucas T, Baird G.

The purpose of this study was to look into the relation between autism spectrum disorders and other child psychiatric disorders. It was noted that autism has become so prevalent that is it present in about 1% of the population today. The hypothesis was basically that when autism is present, there is a likely development of other psychiatric disorders.

The study conducted by Simonoff et.al (2008) basically studied children who were aged ten till age fourteen. In this study, a subgroup of 112 children was chosen from a population. The children were chosen after four level of SCQ score was confirmed and there was presence of ASD diagnosis in them. After that, these children were then assessing for childhood psychiatric disorders. The basic method in this study was that parents were interviewed through the adolescent and child psychiatric assessment. In this study, the researchers were looking out for DSM-IV diagnoses of depression, tic disorder, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), enuresis, childhood anxiety disorder, oppositional defiant and conduct disorder, encopresis and trichotillomania. The results of the research showed that seventy percent of the children had at least one of the aforementioned disorders. Furthermore, 41% had two or more of these disorders (Simonoff et.al, 2008)

This was just the general finding but going into the specificities, more details were revealed. It was seen that the most common diagnosis was social anxiety disorder. It was noted that 29% of the children were affected with disorder. 28.8% of the children were affected with ADHD and 28.1% were also affected with oppositional defiant disorder. It was Laos noted that the children who were affected with ADHD had another co morbid diagnosis. The major conclusion therefore was that children with autism spectrum disorders are also affected with other common psychiatric disorders as well.

Somatic overgrowth predisposes to seizures in autism spectrum disorders.

Valvo G, Baldini S, Brachini F, Apicella F, Cosenza A, Ferrari AR, Guerrini R, Muratori F, Romano MF, Santorelli FM, Tancredi R, Sicca F.

This study carried out by Valvo...

As it is known, ASD is mixture of complex disorders and complex functions within the brain. The major purpose of this study was to see try to assess whether some subgroups with apparent clinical features come out with a co morbid condition along with being autistic. In this study, two hundred and six persons with idiopathic autism spectrum disorder were divided into three different groups depending on their EEG and the presence or absence of seizures. The parameters that were investigated were electro clinical, auxological, and neurobehavioral . In doing so, it was identified which groups are actually at a high risk for seizures. The statistical analysis made use of post-hox multiple comparisons, ANOVA, and Chi squared test in order to assess the different variables that were present. Furthermore, a correspondent analysis was also carried out to assess which of the patients affected with ASD also had seizures.
The results of this study were in favor of the hypothesis that was created. It was revealed that 28.2% of the children of the entire cohort did have seizures. Furthermore, EEG abnormalities were noted in 64.1% of the children. The results basically supported the notion that epilepsy prevalence in the population of those affected ASD does exceed the prevalence of epilepsy in the general population. (Valvo, 2013) An interesting thing to note was that the seizures were positively correlated with the presence of severe intellectual disability.

The conclusion of this study was that there is a high association between ASD and the development of seizures and an abnormal EEG later on in life. It was also apparent that tall stature was the phenotypic biomarker that put initials at high risk for having abnormal EEG or developing seizures later in life. Another revelation from this study was individuals who have tall stature, macrocephaly and ASD; they are predisposed to early onset seizures.

Co morbid Psychiatric Disorders in Children with Autism: Interview Development and Rates of Disorders

Ovsanna T. Leyfer AE Susan E. Folstein AE Susan Bacalman AE Naomi O. Davis AE Elena Dinh AE Jubel Morgan AE Helen Tager-Flusberg AEJanet E. Lainhart

Leyfer et. al (2006) went on to study the screening questions and options that were utilized to monitor children with autism spectrum disorder. There was need to incorporate more questions that went on to uncover the presence of different co morbidities. The purpose of this study was therefore to pilot the autism co morbidity interview present and lifetime version (ACI-PL) It was believed that ACI-PL goes on to give a good diagnosis for disorders such ADHD, OCD, and Depression.

It was seen that the ACI-PL was investigated in two different samples. The first sample was from Boston and the other was from Salt Lake City. Participants chosen from Boston were already part of study regarding social functioning and language. These children therefore belonged to the same criteria and were affected with Autism.

On the other hand, the set of children from Salt Lake City was part of a research that was concerned with males having a performance IQ above 65. The total sample in this study therefore consisted of 109 children who did meet different known criteria's for autism. The criteria's used for selection were the DSM-IV-TR, Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and Autism Diagnostic Interview Raised criteria for Autism. All of the children chosen were affected by idiopathic autism. The results revealed that the most prevalent diagnosis along the DSM-IV criteria was that of a certain phobia. It was seen that 44% of the autistic children did have a specific phobia. The most common types of phobias noted were fear of needles and crowds. Other less common fears were fear of flying, bridges and tunnels. The second most common diagnosis made in children with autism was of OCD. Furthermore, the DSM-IV criterion for Obsessive compulsive disorder was met by 37% of the children. (Leyfer et.al, 2006)

This study therefore went on to confirm the co-existence of a psychiatric disorder along with autism. The study revealed that 72% of the autistic children were affected with at least a single DSM-IV Axis I disorder (Leyfer et.al, 2006)

Markers of Celiac Disease and Gluten Sensitivity in Children with Autism.

Lau NM, Green PH, Taylor AK, Hellberg D, Ajamian M, Tan CZ, Kosofsky BE, Higgins JJ, Rajadhyaksha AM, Alaedini A.

As it was stated above, children who have autism are more likely to develop symptoms of gastrointestinal distress. For a long time, many people though that increased activity of the GIT such as recurring diarrhea could be due to the increased level of anxiety amongst these children. Lau…