TABLE 2. Overall health, physical difficulties, and co-occurring mental health or other conditions among adolescent children in the autism spectrum disorder and the general population control groups — Study to Explore Early Development, four U.S. sites, 2018–2020*.
| Current health-related outcomes | Autism, % (n = 146) | Control, % (n = 249) | Autism versus control, aPR† (95% CI)§ |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Overall health
|
N/A |
N/A |
p<0.001¶ |
| Excellent |
40.4 |
65.1 |
0.7 (0.5–0.9) |
| Very good |
41.1 |
24.9 |
1.7 (1.2–2.4) |
| Good |
15.1 |
7.6 |
2.0 (1.1–3.5) |
| Fair or poor |
3.4 |
2.4 |
—** |
|
Physical difficulties, one or more
|
21.2 |
1.6 |
11.6 (4.2–31.9) |
| Difficulty using hands |
13.7 |
0.4 |
20.8 (3.0–143.4) |
| Difficulty hearing or deafness |
5.5 |
0.4 |
—** |
| Difficulty seeing or blindness |
5.5 |
0.4 |
—** |
| Difficulty walking or climbing stairs |
3.4 |
1.2 |
—** |
|
Gastrointestinal symptoms/difficulties††
|
19.9 |
11.6 |
1.4 (0.7–2.6) |
|
At least one sleep problem occurring ≥2 times/week
§§
|
54.8 |
40.2 |
1.5 (1.2–1.9) |
|
Current mental health or other conditions
| |||
| Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity disorder |
39.7 |
15.7 |
1.7 (1.2–2.6) |
| Anxiety |
36.3 |
16.1 |
2.4 (1.6–3.5) |
| Intellectual disability |
27.4 |
0.8 |
30.6 (7.4–127.4) |
| Depression |
6.8 |
6.8 |
1.0 (0.4–2.2) |
| Obsessive-compulsive disorder |
8.9 |
2.0 |
3.5 (1.1–10.8) |
| Epilepsy or seizure disorder |
7.5 |
0.4 |
1.8 (0.5–6.2) |
| Other conditions¶¶ |
4.1 |
0.4 |
—** |
| One or more conditions |
63.0 |
28.9 |
1.9 (1.5–2.5) |
| Two or more conditions | 41.8 | 10.8 | 3.4 (2.2–5.3) |
Abbreviations: aPR = adjusted prevalence ratio; CI = confidence interval; N/A = not applicable.
* Survey data were collected from four sites in Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania as part of a preliminary follow-up study of parents or guardians of adolescents aged 12–16 years who were enrolled in the Study to Explore Early Development (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/seed.html) at ages 2–5 years and initially identified as having autism (autism group) or as general population controls (control group).
† aPRs were estimated using a modified Poisson regression with robust standard error (https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwh090) and study group (autism or control) as the predictor, adjusted for maternal education, maternal country of birth (born inside or outside the United States), adolescent sex (male or female), adolescent race/ethnicity (non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic other, or Hispanic), household income as a percentage of federal poverty level, and insurance type (private, public, both, or neither); data on maternal and paternal race/ethnicity that were collected during the original Study to Explore Early Development were used in combination to assign adolescent race/ethnicity.
§ aPRs were considered significant when the 95% CI did not include the null value of 1.
¶ Significance testing conducted using ordinal logistic regression; p-values indicate significant between group variation.
** aPR suppressed because of small cell size (n<10) and low estimated stability.
†† Parents who indicated that during the previous 12 months their child had frequent or chronic difficulty with any digesting food, including stomach or intestinal problems, constipation, or diarrhea.
§§ Sleep problems included teeth grinding, restlessness, bed-wetting, sleep talking, sleep walking, nightmares, and night terrors.
¶¶ Other conditions included substance abuse, bipolar disorder, Tourette syndrome, fragile X syndrome, or Down syndrome; adolescents with more than one of these specific conditions are represented only once.