1. Auld C, Foley KR, Cashin A. Daily living skills of autistic adolescents and young adults: A scoping review. Australian occupational therapy journal. 2022.

INTRODUCTION: Daily living skills (DLS) are essential for an increased quality of life and autonomous living. DLS are a focus of occupational therapy practice; however, there has been no identified review of DLS acquisition in autistic adolescents or adults. A scoping review was undertaken of which the objective was to evaluate and synthesise the extent, range, and nature of research activity, and to identify research gaps in the existing literature as they relate to DLS acquisition and autistic adolescents and adults. METHODS: A structured search of the literature was conducted. Studies published in English between 2011 and 2021 that included a focus on the acquisition of DLS in autistic adolescents and young adults were included. The titles and abstracts of 103 records were screened, and the full text of 53 records was reviewed. These reference lists were hand searched. Following this process, 25 papers were found to meet the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: Findings indicate inconsistencies throughout the literature, with a lack of consensus on best practice methods, mediums, and/or tools to support optimal outcomes in terms of DLS acquisition for the autistic population. Themes related to (1) Generalisation of Skills Across Contexts, (2) Skill Maintenance, (3) Technology as a Teaching Method, (4) Participant and Family Perspectives, and (5) The Balance of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) focus in research were extracted from the reviewed literature. There is a strong consensus in the findings of the identified papers that autistic adolescents and young adults experience poorer outcomes in terms of DLS acquisition than non-autistic peers, and peers with other developmental or intellectual disabilities. CONCLUSION: Future research is needed to fill these identified gaps and provide a clearer understanding on interventions to support optimal outcomes for autistic individuals.

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2. Du Y, He X, Kochunov P, Pearlson G, Hong LE, van Erp TGM, Belger A, Calhoun VD. A new multimodality fusion classification approach to explore the uniqueness of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder. Human brain mapping. 2022.

Schizophrenia (SZ) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sharing overlapping symptoms have a long history of diagnostic confusion. It is unclear what their differences at a brain level are. Here, we propose a multimodality fusion classification approach to investigate their divergence in brain function and structure. Using brain functional network connectivity (FNC) calculated from resting-state fMRI data and gray matter volume (GMV) estimated from sMRI data, we classify the two disorders using the main data (335 SZ and 380 ASD patients) via an unbiased 10-fold cross-validation pipeline, and also validate the classification generalization ability on an independent cohort (120 SZ and 349 ASD patients). The classification accuracy reached up to 83.08% for the testing data and 72.10% for the independent data, significantly better than the results from using the single-modality features. The discriminative FNCs that were automatically selected primarily involved the sub-cortical, default mode, and visual domains. Interestingly, all discriminative FNCs relating to the default mode network showed an intermediate strength in healthy controls (HCs) between SZ and ASD patients. Their GMV differences were mainly driven by the frontal gyrus, temporal gyrus, and insula. Regarding these regions, the mean GMV of HC fell intermediate between that of SZ and ASD, and ASD showed the highest GMV. The middle frontal gyrus was associated with both functional and structural differences. In summary, our work reveals the unique neuroimaging characteristics of SZ and ASD that can achieve high and generalizable classification accuracy, supporting their potential as disorder-specific neural substrates of the two entwined disorders.

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3. Herrera Mejía J, Ramos-Jiménez A, Jiménez Vega F, Campos Vega R, González Córdova AF, Wall-Medrano A. [Functional feeding to alleviate gastrointestinal disorders associated with autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review]. Nutricion hospitalaria. 2022.

BACKGROUND: gastrointestinal disorders (GIDs) are common comorbidities in patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD); treatments with gluten- and casein-free (LGLC) diets or prebiotic/probiotic supplements may reduce the severity of GIDs. OBJECTIVE: to integrate and discuss the evidence on the effectiveness of LGLC diet therapies and prebiotic/probiotic supplements on GIDs in patients with ASD. METHODOLOGY: the guidelines for the publication of systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) were used. Participant characteristics, dietary interventions, prebiotic/prebiotic supplementation, effects of interventions on GIDs, risk of bias, and safety of treatments were analyzed. RESULTS: fifteen investigations were analyzed; the prevalence of GIDs among patients with ASD was high (58 %; range, 27-83 %). In more than 20 % of the patients managed with LGLC diets or supplements GID severity decreased (mainly constipation, diarrhea, and abdominal pain). Increases in the counts of beneficial bacteria and a decrease in the proportion of pathogenic bacteria were reported after supplement use. However, all these investigations had significant methodological biases. CONCLUSIONS: although reductions in the frequency and severity of some GIDs have been found, the effectiveness of these treatments has not been proven yet. Given the methodological differences in the investigations, the design of rigorous studies to evaluate the therapeutic effects of these treatments on gastrointestinal health in patients with ASD is warranted.

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4. Higashida N. My autism and my desired quality of life. Developmental medicine and child neurology. 2022.

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5. Obeidat R, Noureldin A, Bitouni A, Abdellatif H, Lewis-Miranda S, Liu S, Badner V, Timothé P. Oral health needs of U.S. children with developmental disorders: a population-based study. BMC public health. 2022; 22(1): 861.

BACKGROUND: Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN) have higher rates of oral diseases and tooth decay compared with the general population. Children with developmental disorders/ disabilities (DD) are a subset of CSHCN whose oral health has not been specifically addressed. Therefore, this study had two objectives: to describe the oral health needs (OHN) of children with DD compared with children without DD; and to assess barriers to access to care, utilization of dental services, and their association with oral health needs for children with DD. METHODS: This cross-sectional study utilized a sample of 30,530 noninstitutionalized children from the 2018 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). Analysis was conducted using descriptive and inferential statistics. RESULTS: The analysis identified 6501 children with DD and 24,029 children without DD. Children with DD had significantly higher prevalence of OHN (20.3% vs. 12.2%, respectively), unmet dental needs (3.5% vs 1.2%), and utilization of any dental visits (86.1% vs 76.1%), (P-value < . 001). The adjusted logistic model identified four factors that contributed to the higher odds of OHN among children with DD: poverty (< 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (AOR = 2.27, CI: 1.46-3.51), being uninsured (AOR = 2.12, 95% CI: 1.14-3.95), a high level of disability (AOR = 1.89, CI: 1.23-2.78), and living in the western United States (AOR = 1.61, CI: 1.09-2.37. CONCLUSION: Despite higher utilization of dental services, children with DD had poorer oral health and more unmet dental needs than children without DD. Advocacy efforts and policy changes are needed to develop affordable access that assesses, as early as possible, children with DD whose conditions impact their ability a great deal so that their potential OHN may be alleviated more effectively.

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6. Sung S, Fenoglio A, Wolff JJ, Schultz RT, Botteron KN, Dager SR, Estes AM, Hazlett HC, Zwaigenbaum L, Piven J, Elison JT. Examining the factor structure and discriminative utility of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised in infant siblings of autistic children. Child development. 2022.

Using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised in a longitudinal sample of infant siblings of autistic children (HR; n = 427, 171 female, 83.4% White) and a comparison group of low-risk controls (LR, n = 200, 86 female, 81.5% White), collected between 2007 and 2017, this study identified an invariant factor structure of temperament traits across groups at 6 and 12 months. Second, after partitioning the groups by familial risk and diagnostic outcome at 24 months, results reveal an endophenotypic pattern of Positive Emotionality at both 6 and 12 months, (HR-autism spectrum disorder [ASD] < HR-no-ASD < LR). Third, increased 'Duration of Orienting' at 12 months was associated with lower scores on the 24-month developmental outcomes in HR infants. These findings may augment efforts for early identification of ASD.

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