Medical symptoms and conditions in autistic women.
Authors
Pohl, Alexa
Tsompanidis, Alexandros
Weir, Elizabeth
Lombardo, Michael V
Ruigrok, Amber
Smith, Paula
Baron-Cohen, Simon
Publication Date
2022-02Journal Title
Autism
ISSN
1362-3613
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Volume
26
Issue
2
Pages
373-388
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Simantov, T., Pohl, A., Tsompanidis, A., Weir, E., Lombardo, M. V., Ruigrok, A., Smith, P., et al. (2022). Medical symptoms and conditions in autistic women.. Autism, 26 (2), 373-388. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211022091
Description
Funder: National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001739
Funder: Templeton World Charitable Foundation
Funder: NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in Cambridge
Funder: Autism Research Trust
Abstract
Sex-steroids, such as testosterone, are thought to be one of the biological factors implicated in autism. This relies on the sex bias in the diagnosis of autism (boys are approximately four times more likely to be diagnosed than girls) and findings of associations with fetal testosterone levels in traits and abilities related to autism. The current study aimed to examine the association between medical conditions and physical symptoms, which tend to manifest in adulthood, and autism in females. Moreover, we examined their association with autistic traits throughout the spectrum. We focused on autistic women because there is little research focusing on the healthcare needs of autistic women, but those that exist suggest heightened vulnerability, and lower access to medical care. We find that conditions related to steroid hormones function are more frequent in autistic women and that they correlate with autistic traits. Specifically, we found that body mass index, reproductive system diagnoses, prediabetes symptoms, irregular puberty onset, and menstrual irregularities were significantly more frequent in autistic women and were significantly correlated with autistic traits in neurotypical women. The findings have important implications for raising awareness in autistic women of the possibility of medical conditions which might need medical attention. In addition, healthcare providers should consider these associations when performing healthcare maintenance checks and/or screening for autism.
Keywords
Original Articles, autism, clinical, females, puberty, steroids, testosterone
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (award number RG69312)
Wellcome Trust (grant number RNAG/528)
Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) (grant agreement No 777394)
Identifiers
10.1177_13623613211022091
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211022091
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/333659
Rights
Licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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