'The rates of autism have increased approximately 1000% since the 1980s. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) describes the cluster of neurodevelopmental disorders as defined by American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Officially, there are now 1 in 88 children in the United States who have ASD.
Boys are almost five times more likely to be autistic than girls -- with 1 in 54 boys now identified. To curb the rates at which children will be identified with the illness in the future, new guidelines issued by the APA will reduce by almost one third the total number of those diagnosed, according to new research from Columbia University School of Nursing published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.'
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