Autistic adults have been found to be at higher risk from additional health problems including depression, obesity and elevated blood pressure. Problems that might in part stem from the social isolation many of them face, a study suggests.
The study, conducted by the Autism Research Program of Kaiser Permanente Northern California, will be presented in Atlanta at the International Meeting for Autism.
"Children with autism become adults with autism," program director and study leader author Lisa Croen says. "Doctors caring for adults need to be aware that adults have autism and an adult with autism could be walking through their door."
A number of medical conditions occur more often in autistic adults than in others, the researchers found, and they are often already apparent in their childhood. Until now, though, there has been little research into whether those conditions persist into adulthood or whether new ailments are more likely.
"Some of these conditions we've seen in children with autism, so we expected higher rates of anxiety and depression, and some of the medical disorders, such as gastrointestinal disturbances, in adults," Croen says.
"That's been reported for a long time in children, so we're not surprised to see those continue to be elevated," she added. "But we were surprised by the magnitude of what we found."
The researchers analyzed medical records of 2,100 adults on the autism spectrum who were enrolled between 2008 and 2012 in Kaiser's health plan in the northern California area, comparing them with more than 20,000 non-autistic Kaiser enrollees.
U.S. government's statistics suggest 1 in 68 U.S. children -- more than a million -- have some form of autism spectrum disorder, often involving impairments of language and social end intellectual behaviors.
Those issues can sometimes make autistic patients difficult for doctors to examine to diagnose their health issues, Croen said.
One paradoxical result of the new study, researchers noted, was that adults with autism were found to be less likely than other people to consume alcohol or indulge in smoking.
That could be a result of the social isolation experienced by many autistic adults, Croen said, since both smoking and drinking are considered social activities, especially among young adults.
"These young people with autism are out of the mainstream," she said.
