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Longitudinal Developmental Trajectories in Young Autistic Children Presenting with Seizures, Compared to those Presenting without Seizures, Gathered via Parent-report Using a Mobile Application

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Abstract

The effect associated with the presence of seizures in 2 to 5-year-old autistic children was investigated in the largest and the longest observational study to-date. Parents assessed the development of 8461 children quarterly for three years on five orthogonal subscales: combinatorial receptive language, expressive language, sociability, sensory awareness, and health. Seizures were reported in 958 children (11%). In order to investigate the effect of seizures, children with seizures were matched to those with no seizures using propensity score based on age, gender, expressive language, receptive language, sociability, sensory awareness, and health at the 1st evaluation. The number of matched participants was 955 in each group. Children with no seizures developed faster compared to matched children with seizures in all subscales. On an annualized basis, participants with no seizures improved their receptive language 1.5-times faster than those with seizures; expressive language: 1.3-times faster; sociability: 2.3-times faster; sensory awareness: 6.2-times faster; and health: 20.0-times faster. This study confirms a high prevalence of seizures in ASD children and informs on the effect of seizures on children’s longitudinal developmental trajectories.

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Data Availability

De-identified raw data from this manuscript are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Code is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Dr. Petr Ilyinskii for his scrupulous editing of this manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ImagiRation, Boston, MA, 02135, USA

    Phillip Forman & Andrey Vyshedskiy

  2. Independent Researcher, Newton, MA, 02459, USA

    Edward Khokhlovich

  3. Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Andrey Vyshedskiy

Authors
  1. Phillip Forman
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  2. Edward Khokhlovich
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  3. Andrey Vyshedskiy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrey Vyshedskiy.

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Ethical Approval

Using the Department of Health and Human Services regulations found at 45 CFR 46.101(b)(4), the Biomedical Research Alliance of New York LLC Institutional Review Board (IRB) determined that this research project is exempt from IRB oversight.

Informed Consent

Caregivers have consented to anonymized data analysis and publication of the results. The study was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki (Association, 2013).

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Authors declare no competing interests.

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Forman, P., Khokhlovich, E. & Vyshedskiy, A. Longitudinal Developmental Trajectories in Young Autistic Children Presenting with Seizures, Compared to those Presenting without Seizures, Gathered via Parent-report Using a Mobile Application. J Dev Phys Disabil 35, 331–351 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-022-09851-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-022-09851-y

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