My recommendation to Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP): Encourage patients to participate in studies that could provide more meaningful answers to the questions of how effective universal screening might be. A new turn in the debate over when to start screening babies for autism. Autism is usually diagnosed in children who are around 2 years of age when the symptoms of the disorder are first noticed by a parent, teacher or doctor.
But by that time, some experts say, autism may be harder to treat. Working on ways to detect and diagnose the condition in younger babies, when behavior-based interventions might be helpful in minimizing some of the symptoms or even reversing them, but the evidence so far is not strong enough to recommend screening for all infants 18 to 30 months old. The common screening tools—the most popular of which is a parent questionnaire that assesses children’s…
