Dr. Coplan cautions that although the model has predictive value for clinical outcomes when looking at average outcomes for groups of children, it will not necessarily predict a course for each individual patient. Rather it would provide a "roadmap" on which to plot a child's progress over time.
The model still must be confirmed in larger studies of populations of children with ASD, not just in a sample from one clinic, according to Dr. Coplan.
If larger studies validate the model, he adds, it may become a benchmark to help researchers evaluate the effectiveness of particular ASD treatments. "Many currently popular therapies may be capitalizing on the natural history of ASD, and claiming such improvement on their own behalf," he writes in the paper. If patients improved more than would be anticipated from the model's outline of the natural course of ASD alone, that might provide evidence for a treatment's success.
Additionally, the model might shed light into causes of ASD, as yet unknown. Children with ASD from different causes may follow different developmental paths," says Dr. Coplan, and studying those patterns may help researchers to better identify causes for the diseases.
Dr. Coplan has since left Children's Hospital to establish a private practice, Neurodevelopmental Pediatrics of the Main Line, in Rosemont, Pa. Dr. Coplan's co-author was Abbas F. Jawad, Ph.D., of the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The Regional Autism Center at Chi
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Contact: John Ascenzi
Ascenzi@email.chop.edu
267-426-6055
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
5-Jul-2005