For a while I have wondered why children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have or exhibit symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). A quick google search will tell you that these two common neurodevelopmental disorders often co-occur. In fact, ADHD happens to be the most common co-occurrence in children with ADHD. This peaked my interest and found a paper (Cited below)detailing what we know about this trend.
Like many neurological matters, we do not know everything about this connection and its causes. Using statistics and prior studies over the last ten years (keep in mind this paper was published in 2014), 30-50% of people with ASD exhibit ADHD symptoms. Going the other way, estamies predict that 2/3 of individuals with ADHD exhibit ASD symptoms.
Obviously, these two together would do more harm than apart. Combining ASD’s characteristic social behavior deficiencies and ADHD’s inhibition in attention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness makes for a terrible outcome. The article cities findings from the Autism Treatment Network (ATN) saying that the co-occurrence leads to a lower quality of life and even lower adaptive functioning than if they occured on their own.
Etiology is the study of the origins of diseases and disorders. Again, while we don’t know the exact cause of this phenomenon, possible etiologies were presented by the article. The most supported would be a possible genetic link. In the studies mentioned by the article, 50-72% of the genetics factors that contribute to each disorder overlapped. This is strong evidence for this explanation.
The article discussed went on treatment of co-occurrence, future research implications, and much more. You can find the link in the citation below to that article in you want to find out more.
Leitner Y. (2014). The co-occurrence of autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children – what do we know?. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 268. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00268
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