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New method developed to diagnose autism

Doc.

New Member
arg-fallbackName="Doc."/>
UK scientists have developed a new type of brain scan that only takes 15 minutes and can diagnose autism in adults with over 90 per cent accuracy: they hope to develop it so it can be used to screen children for autism spectrum disorders.

The article
 
arg-fallbackName="lrkun"/>
Doc. said:
UK scientists have developed a new type of brain scan that only takes 15 minutes and can diagnose autism in adults with over 90 per cent accuracy: they hope to develop it so it can be used to screen children for autism spectrum disorders.

The article

This is great. However, I hope they can make a procedure with regard to the ethical issue: People who did not have autism, but may actually have under the test. Do you think it is applicable in the medical field, doc?
 
arg-fallbackName="pdka2004"/>
Doc. said:
UK scientists have developed a new type of brain scan that only takes 15 minutes and can diagnose autism in adults with over 90 per cent accuracy: they hope to develop it so it can be used to screen children for autism spectrum disorders.

The article


So what about the 10% that get misdignosed? I would hope that they only consider this as "patterns that might point to" autism, rather than a final diagosis by itself as a 10% margin of error would not be acceptable here
 
arg-fallbackName="Giliell"/>
I think it would be great if we could finally link authism to some "hard facts". Too bad it didn't work for ADHS, because I think that way too many kids are drugged because their parents thought that the TV would raise them well enough and that a Playstation equalled love (disclaimer: nothing against a Playstation, but it's not a good idea to give it to a five year old and let them play for hours).
I'm interested in how the 10% were misdiagnosed. Were they diagnosed to have it while being in the healthy group? Or were they getting a "false negative". Because if it were the latter, it could also be that the wrong diagnose might be the current one.
 
arg-fallbackName="Doc."/>
I have found a better article and edited the link in my first post, it should now address your concerns.

What were the basic results?

Using this method, the study was able to identify individuals with ASD with a sensitivity (accuracy) of up to 90% (i.e. if a volunteer had a clinical diagnosis of ASD, there was a 90% probability that he was correctly assigned to the ASD category by the computer programme).

However, the accuracy of the results varied according to the measurements used. The computer diagnoses were more accurate using measurements from the left hemisphere of the brain, with individuals with ASD being correctly identified in 85% of all cases, when all five measures were taken into account. The highest accuracy of 90% was obtained using a measurement of cortical thickness in the left hemisphere.

On the right hemisphere, the assessments were not as accurate, with individuals with ASD being correctly classified in 65% of all the cases.

Specificity (correctly identifying that a person with no clinical diagnosis of ASD did not have the condition) was also very high. Of the control group, 80% were correctly classified as controls.

In the ADHD control group, information from the left hemisphere was used to correctly identify 15 of the 19 individuals with ADHD (78.9%), while four of these individuals (21%) were incorrectly allocated to the ASD group. Classifications using the right hemisphere were less accurate.
 
arg-fallbackName="Giliell"/>
Sounds interestinglier and interestinglier ;)
As I understand, these are just first results and as such they sound very promising to me, especially since it seems to work for ADHD, too.
Hopefully , in a few years those tests would be so accurate that they would become standard diagnosis and doctor would be required to run them before drugging children
 
arg-fallbackName="Andiferous"/>
Well, current wisdom suggests that early diagnosis of Autism can reduce severity over the long term. Why Autistic programs often start from the toddler years. So this seems like very good news, if it works for children.
 
arg-fallbackName="YesIAMJames"/>
What were the basic results?

Using this method, the study was able to identify individuals with ASD with a sensitivity (accuracy) of up to 90% (i.e. if a volunteer had a clinical diagnosis of ASD, there was a 90% probability that he was correctly assigned to the ASD category by the computer programme).

However, the accuracy of the results varied according to the measurements used. The computer diagnoses were more accurate using measurements from the left hemisphere of the brain, with individuals with ASD being correctly identified in 85% of all cases, when all five measures were taken into account. The highest accuracy of 90% was obtained using a measurement of cortical thickness in the left hemisphere.

On the right hemisphere, the assessments were not as accurate, with individuals with ASD being correctly classified in 65% of all the cases.

Specificity (correctly identifying that a person with no clinical diagnosis of ASD did not have the condition) was also very high. Of the control group, 80% were correctly classified as controls.

In the ADHD control group, information from the left hemisphere was used to correctly identify 15 of the 19 individuals with ADHD (78.9%), while four of these individuals (21%) were incorrectly allocated to the ASD group. Classifications using the right hemisphere were less accurate.

It looks like it could be promising if the test if further refined but there are some flaws.
Seems like a very small clinical study larger tests are needed before we draw any conclusion.

Secondly supposing the figures are accurate. Lets assume we have 150,000 people tested. 1 in 150 people has autism (or whatever the latest figure is). So:

Using the highest figure of 90% detection.

1,000 of those will have autism

149,000 will not

Out of those 1000 with autism 900 (90%) will be diagnosed as such.

Out of the 149,000 neurotypicals 31,290 (21%) will be falsely diagnosed.

The good news is that if the test comes back negative there is only a 0.067% chance you you have it.

The bad news is if you get a positive result you only have a 2.87% chance of actually having the disorder!
 
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