Brief ReportDemographic profile of families and children in the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED): Case-control study of autism spectrum disorder
Section snippets
Methods
SEED is a multi-site, case-control study, the methods for which have been described previously.19 Cases (ASD group) comprise children with ASD verified by clinical evaluation. The two comparison groups include a general Population group and a Developmental Delays/Disorders group. Eligible children were born between September 1, 2003 and August 31, 2006 in a study catchment area, resided there at first study contact, and lived with a family member or other caregiver aged ≥18 years, who had
Results
Of 3769 children enrolled between December 2007 and September 2011, the caregivers of 3048 (80.9%) children were interviewed. There were 2768 children whose caregivers were interviewed and who received a final classification, including 697 (25.2%) in the ASD group, 1084 (39.2%) in the Developmental Delays/Disorders group (305 [11.0%] with and 779 [28.1%] without ASD characteristics), and 987 (35.7%) in the Population group. Most caregiver respondents (99.0%) were biological mothers; .6% were
Discussion
Through the use of a broad diagnostic net, involving both clinical and educational recruitment sources, SEED successfully enrolled a highly diverse sample of participants, including minorities and low socioeconomic status families, with distributions comparable to the racial and ethnic diversity in the United States.30 While a number of large, population-based studies of ASD using surveillance or administrative data have been conducted in North America, (e.g. Refs. 1, 31, 32, 33) SEED improves
Conclusion
The primary goal of SEED is to test important hypotheses related to ASD phenotype and etiology, through collection of in-depth data that will enable the testing of multiple different, but potentially interrelated, hypotheses. The current report demonstrates that SEED methods yielded a well-defined and socioeconomically diverse study sample that will provide novel opportunities to explore the influence of socioeconomic characteristics on etiologic risk factor associations with ASD and ASD
Acknowledgments
Patrick Thompson made important contributions to data selection, management and cleaning for this paper. The investigators gratefully acknowledge the project staff and the enrolled families. A preliminary version of these results was presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research, Toronto, Canada, on May 18, 2012.
References (41)
- et al.
Genetic advances in autism: heterogeneity and convergence on shared pathways
Curr Opin Genet Dev
(2009) - et al.
Fetal exposure to teratogens: evidence of genes involved in autism
Neurosci Biobehav Rev
(2011) - et al.
Autism spectrum disorders and epigenetics
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(2010) Gene expression studies in autism: moving from the genome to the transcriptome and beyond
Neurobiol Dis
(2012)- et al.
Performance of the Social Communication Questionnaire in children receiving preschool special education services
Res Autism Spectr Disord
(2007) - et al.
Combining information from multiple sources in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
(2006) Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among children aged 8 years – Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 sites, United States, 2010
MMWR Surveill Summ
(2014)- et al.
Global prevalence of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders
Autism Res
(2012) - et al.
The epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders
Annu Rev Public Health
(2007) Contributions of the environment and environmentally vulnerable physiology to autism spectrum disorders
Curr Opin Neurol
(2010)
Socioeconomic inequality in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder: evidence from a US cross-sectional study
PLoS One
Advancing paternal age and risk of autism: new evidence from a population-based study and a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies
Mol Psychiatry
Advancing maternal age is associated with increasing risk for autism: a review and meta-analysis
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
Perinatal and neonatal risk factors for autism: a comprehensive meta-analysis
Pediatrics
The role of prenatal, obstetric and neonatal factors in the development of autism
J Autism Dev Disord
Ambient air pollution and autism in Los Angeles County, California
Environ Health Perspect
Antidepressant use during pregnancy and childhood autism spectrum disorders
Arch Gen Psychiatry
Use of birth certificates to examine maternal occupational exposures and autism spectrum disorders in offspring
Autism Res
The CHARGE study: an epidemiologic investigation of genetic and environmental factors contributing to autism
Environ Health Perspect
The Autism Birth Cohort: a paradigm for gene-environment-timing research
Mol Psychiatry
Cited by (0)
Conflict of interest statement: None of the authors report any conflicts of interest.
Disclosures: This project was supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Cooperative Agreements announced under the following RFAs: 01086, 02199, DD11-002, DD06-003, DD04-001, and DD09-002. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- 1
Current address: Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, Campus Box F800, Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building, 13055 E 17th Avenue, Aurora, CO 80045, USA.
- 2
Current address: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop E-86, Atlanta, GA 30329-4027, USA.
- 3
Current address: Department of Epidemiology, CB #7435, University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7435, USA.
- 4
Current address: ASPIRE Program, El Camino Hospital, Behavioral Health Services, 2500 Grant Rd, Mountain View, CA 94040-4378, USA.
- 5
Current address: Department of Public Health, Institute of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 2, Bldg 1260, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.