A new study in JAMA Psychiatry suggests rising rates of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses are likely driven by broadening diagnostic criteria. But scientists at Children’s Health Defense said better diagnostics can’t on their own explain the steep increases in autism and ADHD rates since the 1990s.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientists are pushing back against a study in JAMA Psychiatry suggesting that the global increase in autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses is likely driven by broadening diagnostic criteria.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD chief scientific officer, and Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, criticized the authors of the JAMA study for failing to consider that environmental toxins might be driving the increase.
Hooker said the authors overlooked the possibility that there are now so many toxic exposures that it takes very little genetic susceptibility to trigger autism or ADHD. Changes in diagnostic criteria may be a factor, Hooker said, but there is no way that it explains the steep increase in autism and ADHD rates since the 1990s.
Hooker told The Defender:
“What we’re seeing instead is a lowering of the genetic threshold required to reach a toxic tipping point as the toxic load between 1994 and 2016 skyrocketed with the expanding vaccination schedule, acetaminophen use, the GMO [genetically modified organism] revolution, etc.”
The authors of the JAMA study analyzed data from over 37,000 individuals in Denmark diagnosed with autism or ADHD over two decades. They reported that genetic risks for the conditions decreased over time, while diagnoses increased.
The study concluded that since genetic risk didn’t explain the increase in autism and ADHD diagnoses, the global surge in diagnoses was likely because the criteria used for diagnosing the conditions had broadened.
The authors claimed that the diagnosis threshold for autism and ADHD had lowered over time, so that kids who showed only mild symptoms were now being diagnosed.
The researchers examined three hypotheses for why diagnosis rates have increased — none of which took into account environmental toxins.
First, they thought it possible that diagnostic criteria for autism and ADHD may have broadened over time to include kids with milder symptoms.
Second, they thought maybe that psychiatric disorders that previously had been diagnosed as separate from autism or ADHD were getting lumped into autism or ADHD diagnoses.
Third, they speculated that there is now better detection of autism and ADHD than in the past.
Their data matched the first hypothesis but not the other two, they said.
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