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Query: UMLS:C0004352 (autism)
 32,579 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The study characterizes the use of psychoactive medications among children and youth with autism-spectrum disorders over the course of a calendar year. Eighty-three percent of the sample had at least one drug claim during the year. Prescribed drugs came from 125 different therapeutic classes. The seven most frequently prescribed classes of psychoactive drugs were antidepressants, stimulants, tranquilizers/antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, hypotensive agents, anxiolytic/sedative/hypnotics, and benzodiazepines. The data on other relevant diagnoses indicate that children and youth are frequently treated with medication under an autism-spectrum diagnosis, even though the target symptoms may be commonly associated with other mental disorders. Age data indicate that about 70% of children with autism-spectrum disorders age 8 yr and up receive some form of psychoactive medication in a given year.
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PMID:Medication use among children with autism spectrum disorders. 1763 Aug 68

Although autism existed before 1943, it was Leo Kanner who is credited with the first detailed description of autistic behavior. Before Kanner's report, the behavior was generally known as childhood schizophrenia. He noted that the outstanding common feature of all the children was certain parental personalities, like obsessiveness and lack of warm-heartedness. Concurrent with Kanner's report and observations were those of Asperger in 1944. However, Asperger's report, in a German-language journal, was not brought to the forefront until the 1980s. The children described by Asperger had milder forms of behavior disorders than those described by Kanner, with the resulting diagnosis of autism broadened and blurred. The main features of the new autistic spectrum included a triad of developmental deficiencies: recognition, communication, and understanding. Regardless of whose research is read, autistic behavior is considered peculiar and difficult to treat. Early treatments included LSD, tranquilizers, and developmental remediation. A later treatment, which proved to be the most successful, is applied behavior analysis (ABA), an outgrowth of B.F. Skinner's conditioning research. The etiology of autism remains a puzzle to scientists, with the most likely hypothesis being a central nervous system dysfunction. With regard to vision, people with autism tend to have abnormal electroretinograms, deficient evoked visual potentials, and atypical opticokinetic nystagmus. Other than a higher than expected incidence of strabismus and oculomotor deficiencies, refractive and binocular vision status of people with autism have been reported to be within normal ranges. Accordingly, the most useful tests for a patient with the diagnosis of autism are those for oculomotor function, opticokinetic nystagmus, and strabismus. The optometrist, thereby, becomes a member of the team helping to diagnose and treat the visual sequelae of autism.
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PMID:Background and history of autism in relation to vision care. 1892 90

Objective: As a treatment for cases of developmental disorder accompanied with epilepsy, the author examined the efficacy and tolerability of combined administration of levetiracetam (LEV) on the cases. Methods: There were 21 participants (male-to-female-ratio was 16 to 5, 6 in their 10s, 7 in their 20s, 7 in their 30s and 1 in their 40s) to whom LEV was prescribed from October 2011 to December 2014. The effect was classified as loss of seizure, effective (more than 75% reduction in the number of seizures, more than 50% reduction in the number of seizures), unchanged (no change), and aggravation (increase in the number of seizures). Results: The study included 19 autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) cases (13 with profound intellectual disability, 5 with severe intellectual disability, and 1 with high functioning autism), 1 borderline intelligence case, and 1 attention deficit/hyper activity disorder (AD/HD) case. By classification of epilepsy seizure, there were 15 symptomatic localization-related epilepsy cases and 6 generalized epilepsy cases. The initial dose of LEV was an average of 488.1 mg/day, and the maintenance dose was an average of 1,714.2 mg/day. The average duration of administration was 2 years and 3 months. In terms of the response rate, there were 11 cases of loss of seizure (52.4%), 4 cases of more than 75% reduction in the number of seizures, (19.0%), and 3 cases of more than 50% reduction in the number of seizures (14.3%). The overall response rate was 85.7% (18 cases). 14.3% was unchanged (3 cases). No aggravation case was observed. There was only one case of dizziness in the initial period, but all cases continued taking LEV. The kinds of anticonvulsant agent could be adjusted from 2.5 at the beginning of LEV administration to 1.5. Emotional stability was also observed. Some cases could stop taking tranquilizers. Conclusions: LEV showed high response rate and tolerability on the cases of ASD and other developmental disorder accompanied with epilepsy. Administration of this drug led to reduction in the number of concomitant medications, which indicates the possibility that LEV may contribute to enhancing compliance.
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PMID:Experience with levetiracetam to epilepsy cases in neurodevelopmental disorders. 3001 Mar 7