Morenike Giwa Onaiwu was stunned when daycare staff pointed out some concerning behaviors in her daughter, Legacy. Little Ella did not respond to her name, she avoided eye contact, spoke little and liked to play alone.
None of this struck Onaiwu, a consultant and writer in Houston, Texas, as unusual, however. “I didn’t recognize that something was wrong,” she commented. “My daughter was just like me.”
Legacy was found to have autism in 2011, just before his 3rd birthday. Months later, at the age of 31, Onaiwu received the same diagnosis.
Autism has long been associated with boys. However, over the past decade, as more doctors, teachers, and parents have been watching for the early signs, the proportion of girls diagnosed with autism has grown.
In 2012, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that boys were 4.7 times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism. By 2018, the ratio had decreased to 4.2 to 1. And in data reported by the agency in March, the figure was 3.8 to 1.
More adult women have been diagnosed with autism, raising questions about the number of young girls who go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed.
“I think we’re just becoming more aware that autism can occur in girls and the differences,” said Catherine Lord, a psychologist and autism researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Lord explained that in decades past, many doctors were unaware that autism might appear differently in girls, who have less noticeable physical manifestations of the disorder.
Studies since then have shown that, compared to boys, girls with autism are more likely to disguise their social challenges, sometimes by imitating the girls around them.
The most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the main classification system used by psychiatrists, published in 2013, specified that autism in girls may be missed because of “more subtle manifestations of communication and social difficulties.” .
Dena Gassner, 61, a graduate student at New York State, has faced social and emotional challenges since she was little. She had suffered sexual abuse, and her emotional problems were attributed to the abuse. She received an incorrect diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
Gassner was found to have autism when he was 40, six years after his son’s diagnosis. At first, she was surprised by her own diagnosis, in part because her son’s difficulties — such as language delays and fixations with certain activities and movies — were so different from her own, she said.
Gassner and Onaiwu are members of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on Autism, a group of US scientists, academics, parents, and autistic adults who advise the Department of Health and Human Services on research and policy.
Now that they have met many other women with autism diagnoses in later life, they suspect that the true autism gender gap is smaller than the data suggests.
In a 2017 review of dozens of studies, researchers in Great Britain estimated the true gender ratio to be closer to 3:1.
Although autism is underdiagnosed in girls, most experts say it is more prevalent in boys. Some studies have suggested that gender differences could stem, at least in part, from genetic differences.
Kevin Pelphrey, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia Brain Institute, said girls might take a bigger “genetic hit” to be affected, possibly because they carry protective genetic factors.
By: AZEEN GHORAYSHI
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6693971, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-02 22:50:09
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