RATES OF AUTISM IN SF BAY AREA: WHITES DOUBLE BLACKS AND HISPANICS, SIMILAR TO ASIANS

Primary Author's Institution/Affiliation
CA Department of Health Services


IS THE AVERAGE PATERNAL AGE OF WHITE AND ASIAN FAMILIES IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA HIGHER THAN THE AVERAGE PATERNAL AGE OF THE HISPANIC AND BLACK FAMILIES?????????

BIRTH PREVALENCE OF AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS (ASD) BY DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS IN THE SAN FRANCSICO BAY AREA OF CALIFORNIA

G. C. Windham, M. Anderson, J. Collins, L. A. Croen, J. K. Grether

Background: Concern about an increase in the number of children diagnosed with ASDs has highlighted the lack of population-based data on rates and trends.

Objective: Establish a multi-source, active surveillance system to determine rates and demographic characteristics of ASD in a geographically-defined birth population in California.

Methods: The base population was all births in a 6-county region during 1994 and 1996. Children with a diagnosis of ASD by age 8 at any available health-related source, including the Department of Developmental Services (DDS), were identified through record review and chart abstraction. Records were linked to birth certificates to identify resident births and obtain demographic information. Clinician review of abstracted data determined final case status consistent with DSM-IV criteria for autistic disorder, PDD-NOS, or Aspergers disorder.

Results: For 1994 births, 1115 source records were reviewed, of which 650 (58%) were abstracted, yielding 384 children ascertained as definite cases and 33 as suspect. In the population of nearly 82,000 births, prevalence of definite ASD was 4.7/1,000 livebirths (5.1/1,000 with suspect cases). Rates among white, non-Hispanics were about double those of Blacks (p=0.002) and Hispanics (p<0.001), but similar to Asians and others. The male:female ratio was 5.7:1, with some variation by race. Rates increased with maternal and paternal age, as well as higher parental education. In multi-variate models, the differences by education and race were somewhat attenuated. The rate appears similar for 1996 births, with 379 definite cases identified.

Conclusions: The ASD birth prevalence in California was within the range of rates recently determined by other sites in the CDC autism surveillance network, but may be somewhat of an undercount due to lack of access to Department of Education records. This work forms a basis for further assessment of trends and etiologic research.

Sponsors: CDC, CDHS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Young_men_freeze_family_plans/articleshow/1746622.cms

Healthy young men in two cities in India are using cryobanking for future fathering of babies.

NEW DELHI: Call it innovative insurance. More and more young men in Delhi who are busy chasing fast-track careers, but are not yet ready to start a family, are choosing to freeze their sperms — to be used when they are ready.

More than 50% of the long-term frozen samples in Delhi's sole commercial sperm banking organisation, Cryogenie, are of healthy young men who are not ready for procreation and do not want to rely on donor sperms either.

Says Dr Iqbal Mehdi, head of cryobanking services at Cryogenie, "The long-term banking facility was initially started with malignancy patients in mind. People who undergo chemo or radiotherapy often suffer from low sperm counts so they store semen before the treatment starts. It was much later that we realised that freezing of sperms gave healthy individuals the option of starting a family when they want to, no matter what their age."


http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1080597


Add to this the changing attitude among women. With an increasing number putting marriage and children on a standby mode the average conceiving age of women is now early-30s, up from mid-20s a couple of years back.

This trend, however, has left women in urban India with an average of just 5-6 ‘good years’ to get pregnant. “Women are unwilling to wait. They would rather use the intrauterine insemination technique that involves injecting sperm in the uterus,” says Anjali Malpani.