Longitudinal comparison between male and female preschool children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Epidemiological studies have highlighted a strong male bias in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), however few studies have examined gender differences in autism symptoms, and available findings are inconsistent. The aim of the present study is to investigate the longitudinal gender differences in developmental profiles of 30 female and 30 male age-matched preschool children with ASD. All the children underwent a comprehensive evaluation at T0 and at T1. Our results have shown no significant interaction between time and gender for predicting autism symptoms, developmental quotient, parental stress, children's adaptive skills and behavior problems. Shedding light on the developmental trajectories in ASD could help clinicians to recognize children with ASD at an earlier age and contribute to the development of appropriate treatments.

Intellectual disability in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Investigation of prevalence in an Italian sample of children and adolescents

“…Moreover, in line with the proportion reported in previous studies only 25.1% had moderate to severe ID (IQ/DQ < 50), whereas 28.1% had average intelligence (114 > IQ/ DQ > 85) and 4.9% had above average intelligence (IQ/DQ > 115) (Table 2) (Charman et al, 2011). Indeed, as reported in a previous study, we found no difference between genders on cognitive functioning (Postorino et al, 2015). It is worth to note that intelligence estimates vary greatly in autism according to the instrument used for the assessment (Barbeau & Zeffiro, 2013;Soiulieres et al, 2011;Dawson, Soulie'res, Gernsbacher, & Mottron, 2007).…”

Lead among children with autism in Iraq. Is it a potential factor?

“…However, the opposite was found in ASD in Smith-Magenis syndrome as female to male ratio was higher [23]. In this study, there were no statistically significant differences between the prevalence of autism and gender, this result is in agreement with Postorino and her team [24] as male bias could be explained by presence of female protecting factors and not due to male related risk factors. Nonetheless, molecular explanations are needed for full understanding of inconsistent results between the studies regarding gender effect on autism prevalence [25].…”

The effect of age, sex and clinical features on the volume of Corpus Callosum in pre‐schoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a case–control study

“…Studies on sex differences in phenotypic presentation of young children with ASD provided contradictory results. Specifically, some investigations failed to detect sex difference in the adaptive and behavioural functioning of toddlers with ASD (Reinhardt et al., ; Postorino et al., ), whereas others showed better performance of young males on communicative and fine‐motor skills, and better visual receptive abilities in young females (Carter et al., ; Hartley and Sikora, ). In addition, restricted, repetitive, stereotyped behaviour are more common in male toddlers than in female toddlers (Hartley and Sikora, ; Sipes et al., ), and young females exhibited more comorbid psychopathology relative to matched males (Hartley and Sikora, ).…”