Interesting new paper in Pediatrics:
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether children with autism have an increased incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms compared with matched control subjects in a population-based sample.
So do autistic kids have more constipation, diarrhoea, reflux, bloating or feeding issues? The conclusion was:
As constipation and feeding issues/food selectivity often have a behavioral etiology, data suggest that a neurobehavioral rather than a primary organic gastrointestinal etiology may account for the higher incidence of these gastrointestinal symptoms in children with autism.
Which is self explanatory but (in my opinion) badly worded. Are the authors saying that _all_ the gastro symptoms they looked at have behavioural aetiology or just constipation and feeding issues? And if the latter, whats their conclusions about the others?
The answer can be found in the results section:
Significant differences between autism case and control subjects were identified in the cumulative incidence of constipation (33.9% vs 17.6%) and feeding issues/food selectivity (24.5% vs 16.1). No significant associations were found between autism case status and overall incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms or any other gastrointestinal symptom category.
OK so for the other three no real difference was found between autistic kids and non autistic kids. Thats why they weren’t mentioned in the conclusion.
Constipation (as is bloating and diarrhoea) is regularly quoted by the anti-vaccine/autism lobby as being part of a set of gastro symptoms ’caused’ by vaccines, along with their child’s autism. This paper addresses that fallacy directly and clearly shows that three issues are no different than non autistic kids and two may have a behavioural cause.