Cases of autism level off after surge in 90s

The occurrence of autism in eight-year-olds reached a plateau in the early 2000s and remained steady throughout 2010, they found.

Writing in the online journal BMJ Open, the experts said the cause of the surge seen in the 1990s “remains in large part a mystery”.

One explanation is changes to the way autism was diagnosed which captured more cases, but this is unlikely to explain the five-fold increase seen.

In the new study, experts including those from the University College London Institute of Child Health, analysed data from the General Practice Research Database, which contains around three million anonymised patient records from GP surgeries in the UK.