Neuropsychiatric “Comorbidity” as Causal Influence in Autism

Behavioral comorbidity is the rule rather than the exception in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and the co-occurrence of autistic traits with subclinical manifestations of other psychiatric syndromes (e.g. anxiety, developmental coordination disorder) extends to the general population, where there is strong evidence for overlap in the respective genetic causes. An ASD “comorbidity” can have several fundamentally-distinct causal origins: it can arise due to shared genetic risk between ASD and non-ASD phenotypes (e.g., ASD and microcephaly in the context of the MECP2 mutation), as a “secondary symptom” of ASD when engendered by the same causal influence (e. g., epilepsy in channelopathies associated with ASD), due to chance co-occurrence of ASD with a causally-independent liability (e.g., ASD and diabetes), or as the late manifestation of an independent causal influence on ASD (eg, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder).
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: In Context Source Type: research