Every two years, the federal government announces the rate of autism. This is what NPR's shots blog had to say about today's numbers, which show 1 in 68 children in the U.S. have an autism spectrum disorder.
That's a remarkable jump from just two years ago, when the figure was 1 in 88 and an even bigger jump from 2007, when it was just 1 in 150.
But officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say the agency's skyrocketing estimates don't necessarily mean that kids are more likely to have autism now than they were 10 years ago.
"It may be that we're getting better at identifying autism," says Coleen Boyle, director of the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental disabilities.
For one thing, the prevalence seems to vary in different communities and among children of different races. The CDC found white children are far more likely to be identified with autism, even though scientists don't believe the rates are truly different between whites, Hispanics or blacks.
That means that the discrepancy lies in the diagnosis and services available in different communities. The shots blog points out the work of George Washington University anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker.
Along with other researchers, he studied autism prevalence in South Korea. They found that 1 in 38 children there met the criteria for autism spectrum disorder. Grinker thinks that the US number is likely closer to the one they saw in South Korea. Which means that in two years the CDC estimate will likely tick higher still.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network issued a statement saying that the CDC numbers show there are big disparities in diagnoses. For example, boys were 4-5 times more likely to be diagnosed than girls. And when it comes to race, white children were about a third more likely to be identified with Autism Specrum Disorder (ASD) than black children and almost 50% more likely to be identified with ASD than Hispanic children.