Excellent panel discussion by the La Trobe University Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre (OTARC) with Dr. Giacomo Vivanti, Dr. Cheryl Dissanjake and Dr. Cynthia Zierhut. The panel comments on the cultural representation of autism as genius in movies such as Rain Man and television series such as the Big Bang theory. Dr. Vivanti talks about autism research tendency to focus on high functioning autism perceived by many autism researchers to constitute "pure" autism research. He calls this bias into question as non evidence based, circular reasoning. There is no legitimate basis to separate autism and intellectual disability as "comorbidity".
Dr. Vivanti's recent paper, Intellectual development in autism spectrum disorders: new insights from longitudinal studies, has looked at the possibility that severe autism itself causes intellectual disability an hypothesis which itself is controversial.
Please explain the term "comorbidities".
ReplyDeleteDoes this refer to multiple conditions caused by the same illness or separate unrelated conditions happening at the same time?
medilexicon.com provides a definition from Stedman's Medical Dictionary
ReplyDeletecomorbidity
Type: Term
Pronunciation: kō′mōr-bid′i-tē
Definitions:
1. A concomitant but unrelated pathologic or disease process; usually used in epidemiology to indicate the coexistence of two or more disease processes.
The information shown above for comorbidity is provided by Stedman's.
* Stedman's, part of Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, provide a comprehensive line of health-science publications for healthcare professionals and medical students.
Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Copyright © 2006 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. All rights reserved.
The issue discussed by Vivanti and the panel is whether Intellectual Disability is an unrelated comorbidity or whether there is a causal relationship whereby severe autism causes intellectual disability.