Children 'may grow out of autism'

Some young children accurately diagnosed as autistic lose their symptoms and their diagnosis as they get older, say US researchers.

The findings of the National Institutes of Health study of 112 children appears to challenge the widely held belief that autism is a lifelong condition.

While not conclusive, the study, in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, suggests some children might possibly outgrow autism.

But experts urge caution.

Much more work is needed to find out what might explain the findings.

Dr Deborah Fein and her team at the University of Connecticut studied 34 children who had been diagnosed with autism in early childhood but went on to function as well as 34 other children in their classes at school.

For comparison, the researchers also studied another 44 children of the same age, sex and non-verbal IQ level who had had a diagnosis of "high-functioning" autism - meaning they were deemed to be less severely affected by their condition.

It became clear that the children in the optimal outcome group - the ones who no longer had recognisable signs of autism - had had milder social deficits than the high-functioning autism group in early childhood, although they did have other autism symptoms, like repetitive behaviours and communication problems, that were as severe.

The researchers went back and checked the accuracy of the children's original diagnosis, but found no reason to suspect that they had been inaccurate.