Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchA Comparison of DSM-IV Pervasive Developmental Disorder and DSM-5 Autism Spectrum Disorder Prevalence in an Epidemiologic Sample
Section snippets
Study Subjects
The target population (N =55,266) included all children born from 1993 to 1999 (7–12 years of age at screening) in a suburb of Seoul, South Korea. Total population screening was conducted with both the Parents' and Teachers' Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ), using the mandatory elementary education system and Disability Registry (DR). This total population approach allowed us to include and examine children with ASD who have used service systems, including health care and
Results
Of 55,266 children 7 to 12 years of age, 36,886 children attended 33 participating elementary schools (from total 43 schools) and/or were enrolled in a DR. Parents of 23,337 children returned ASSQs (63% response). Of the 1,214 sampled screen-positive students, 869 (72%) parents consented to participate in the diagnostic stage (70% male), and 292 (34%) completed diagnostic assessment.
Discussion
Findings from this study show that the new DSM-5 ASD criteria yield changes in estimated prevalence previously established using the DSM-IV PDD criteria. These changes include an approximate 17% decrease in the ASD prevalence from the prior DSM-IV PDD prevalence estimate of 2.64% to a DSM-5 ASD prevalence of 2.20%. These findings are not surprising. When one examines the new DSM-5 criteria, it can be expected that some individuals without relatively high levels of the designated “core” ASD
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Cited by (0)
This research was funded by an Autism Speaks Pilot Research Grant and a Supplement Grant (7996), a Brain Research Foundation Research Grant, a Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative Pilot Grant (137032 M134793), the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) Career Awards (5K01MH079317-02 [Y.S.K.] and K23MH082883 [S.J.K.]), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) R01 Award (R01 ES021462-01), and the Korean Health Technology Research and Development Project, Ministry of Health and Welfare (HI12C0021; HI12C0245-A120029). Additional funding was provided by the Jean Young and Walden W. Shaw Foundation, the Daniel X. and Mary Freedman Foundation, and the Dukyoung Foundation.
We are grateful to all of the schools and families that participated in the study. We thank Eugene Laska, PhD, with the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, for his statistical assistance.
Disclosures: Dr. Leventhal has a consulting relationship with Janssen Pharmaceuticals that is specific to a single project that has no involvement in medication development or marketing. Drs. Y.S. Kim, Fombonne, Koh, S.-J. Kim, and Cheon report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
This article is discussed in an editorial by Dr. Bryan H. King on page 494.
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