There is a bigger chance that people with autism to have a death due to injury than the general population according to scientists. People with the neurodevelopmental disorder have three times higher chance to die from an injury than most people.
People with autism have recorded a 700 percent increase in death due to injury in the last 16 years, according to a new study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The conclusion was published online in the"American Journal of Public Health" stated Medical Xpress.
People with autism have a lower average of age of death than the general population. Their average age at death is 36 while the general population is 72. There is a 28 percent of death due to injury for people with autism; Injury like suffocation, followed by asphyxiation and drowning. Drowning has the highest percentage between the three, drowning was the leading cause of death, said senior author Guohua Li, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Our analysis reveals that children with autism are 160 times as likely to die from drowning as the general pediatric population," said Li. This might be because people with autism are more likely to wander around not knowing that danger is near, Deccan Chronicle reported. There should be more laws and some kind of intervention with swimming classes, Li added. Diagnosis should happen earlier with kids as their life is at risk; it should happen at the age of three or two, he explained.
If the three kinds of death due to injury are combined together, it will result to 80 percent of all the deaths of people with autism. Also, over 40 percent of it happens in the home. The researchers gathered their data from the US National Vital Statistic System. They had the death certificate of 1,367 people with autism who died from 1999 to 2014. With the entire conclusion derived from the study, it did not shine a light as to why the number of deaths is increasing; it needs more research, according to the researchers.
