MRC Review

Medical Research Council Review of Autism Epidemiology and Causes

In December of 2001 the General Medical Council published a review of Autism research entitled MRC Review of Autism Research Epidemiology and Causes.

This page examines the key points of this document. It is useful to see where we are with clinical awareness both in terms of physiological cause and effect together with the psychological factors which affect Autistic people. One must draw one's own conclusions from this document, but it does serve to illustrate just how little is known about Autism, in terms of hard facts, for example, the prevalence of Autism in the adult population is not known and there are no properly controlled studies described in peer-reviewed journals pertaining to Cassien and Gluten free diets.

This document may be downloaded from the GMC site by clicking here Medical Research Council, review of Autism research December 2001.

This page does take some text directly from the report, and it may be, that I am asked to withdraw this for copyright reasons, I do hope that this is not the case, as this is a significant boundary to a web site of this nature, in that it is difficult to provide useful content without at some stage, making reference to official documents or news articles. Obtaining permission is often expensive and very time consuming.

Definition

The report defines autism as follows: "Autism is defined by early signs of impairments in socialisation and communication and the presence of repetitive behaviours. The spectrum includes children and adults across the range of severity and intellectual ability, from severely impaired to high-functioning (termed 'Aspergers syndrome'). Approximately a third of all children with Autism appear to lose skills in their second year, but the significance, in terms of cause and life-course, is unclear.

Advances in Autism research

Significant advances over the last four decades include the following:

• The recognition that autism has a neurobiological basis, which manifests itself itself through behavioural abnormalities. The harmful notion that autism is 'caused' by poor parenting has been completely refuted.
  
• Diagnoses of autism, or one of the other pervasive developmental disorders, can be made with greater certainty owing to the development of more accurate and sensitive diagnostic tools.
  
• The evidence that as yet unidentified genetic and environmental and their interplay play a key role in triggering, development and outcomes of the ASDs - and that there is unlikely to be one single cause.
  
• A much better understanding of the cognitive process of individuals with ASDs and how they perceive the world, and application of that knowledge to developing rational intervention strategies.
  
• The application of brain imaging technologies to understand structural and functional development in ASDs.
  

Notwithstanding these successes, many uncertainties and challenges for research remain.
For instance:

• The causes of the various disorders remain, to a large extent, unidentified.
  
• There is no "cure" for autism, although there are some management strategies that seem to be effective for some individuals.
  
• People with autism also suffer from a number of psychological problems the significance of which - in terms of cause and development of ASDs - in unclear and sometimes controversial.

For reasons outlined at the top of this page, I will not delve too deeply into this report, I would instead urge readers to download the document and examine it for themselves. Some key points of interest are listed below:

• Diagnoses criteria for childhood autism
  
• Lay Group questions (The review included a group of non-medical people to ensure that the review encompassed opinion outside of just the scientific community - a very prudent move). These questions are well worth a read.
  
• What are autism spectrum disorders?
  
• How common are autism spectrum disorders?
  
• What are the causes for autism spectrum disorders?
  
• Taking forward research into autism spectrum disorders.

If the file is unavailable the MRC may have moved it in which case, you can download it from our site by clicking here.