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Autism Diagnosed With a Fifteen Minute Brain Scan
kkleiner writes "A new technique developed at King's College London uses a fifteen minute MRI scan to diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scan is used to analyze the structure of grey matter in the brain, and tests have shown that it can identify individuals already diagnosed with autism with 90% accuracy. The research could change the way that autism is diagnosed – including screening children for the disorder at a young age."
Counting the number of first posts you get on slashdot
What are the operators of these machines called technically? Shamans?
Say you scan 50,000 a year, you'll get 5000 false positives. That means each year you'll have 5000 children who'll have to go through humiliating therapy and have their education severely hampered for no good reason! Of those 50,000, you'd expect only 500 to actually have autism.
Even if you used this as a basis for further testing, You're still putting 10 families through the stress of comprehensive testing for autism for no reason for every 1 family whose child actually has the condition.
its actually much higher than that. What you're quoting is that 1 in 10 people with autism and given a false negative. Its actually much worse. Out of 10,000 children, 1980 would be found positive, out of which only 90 would have the disease. So only about 5% of people who tested postive would actually be autistic. It says this in TFA.
So it only has a 4.5% true positive rate. Great.
With Autism being so prevalent in humans you do have to wonder if it is really a disease or mistake, or perhaps either a previous evolutionary step or our next evolutionary step. While people who suffer at the extreme ends of the autistic spectrum would have difficulty maintaining a society, some of the more moderate autistic individuals are leaders in engineering, technology, and science. I do worry that when you diagnose someone with autism there is this natural "I'm broken" feeling along with it, and everyone treats you like you're disabled and thus useless. So I cannot say if being able to identify autism more often is a good or bad thing.
It is interesting, but unsurprising, that they found that ADHD and autism had no link thus far. Based on the symptoms I expect we'll find that if ADHD exists at all that it will be localised around control, while autism is localised around right/left brain communication.
I can only see this as a good thing, I'm on a compsci course and as you'd expect it seems like a good third of the people there claim to have aspergers, most of those seem fairly typical and reasonably socially functional. I'd be *highly* interested to see what this test reveals about them. This isn't to say I don't believe in the condition, I know plenty who have it and exhibit obvious major behavioural patterns and have actual issues with such things, I for one just suspect it's *way* over diagnosed, hell a number of psychiatrists have called me "aspie" after 5 minutes of talking to me, I certainly don't buy it. I just hope this sort of screening will help people who actually need help get the care they need and de-clog the system of hypochondriac nerds who want to feel special.
It'd be nice if someone out there would focus on prognosis and treatment of ASD.
Usually ASD is already "almost" easy to diagnose by other means. While treatment is not at all.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
No, the headline is absolutely accurate: It doesn't say "correctly diagnosed." I can diagnose autism within five seconds without even seeing the person; it's just that I've got a 50% false positive and 50% false negative rate. Here's my method: I throw a coin.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Since the main article says exactly that, how can it be inaccurate?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The article doesn't show the false positive rate on people that have been diagnosed NOT to suffer from autism...
I hope it doesn't say 90% of them are autism sufferers...
The more fashionable autisms, like Asperger's?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
The research could change the way that autism is diagnosed - including screening children for the disorder at a young age.
The thing about primary screening tests is that they have to give false positives, due to high sensitivity and lower specificity. It's ok if the test tells you you have HIV when actually you don't. It's NOT ok if it doesn't tell you you have it when you do. The other thing about primary screening tests is that they have to be cheap. This test is far from cheap and in fact consumes limited resources. In some countries there are waiting lists for MRIs.
Perhaps this test could be used as a secondary screen, if specificity can be proven to be high enough, to screen those doubtful or borderline cases so that they can be correctly diagnosed.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
With our without counting "kkleiner writes"?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Which is probably why you use such a test as secondary diagnostic or even only as confirmation test. You don't run such test on the population of children, you only run it on children which are already suspected to have autism. In other word, this is not a scanning test.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Therapy's not humiliating. Hell, OT's kinda fun.
Real humiliation is when you're growing up and all the interactions with your peers blow up in your face due to your mind-blindless and inability to read body language or understand personal space, and your classmates ostracize you because they think you're weird, and you don't know what's going wrong. And since there's nothing you know of (because your'e undiagnosed) that differentiates you from your peers or explains why this is happening, you conclude you're getting ostracized because you're some doofy, idiotic, bad person. That, my friend, is real humiliation.
Let me first say that this is great news - if it turns out to be true however following the addage of most published research is false. It's worth keeping in mind that this has 20 controls, 20 ASD and 19 ADHD - according to the article they could distinguish the ASD diagnoses from the controls and the ADHD but considering that according to the DSM IV autism can have close to 100 unique presentations. I wonder how much this actually demonstrates.
"A new technique developed at King’s College London" ...is not a new technique at all. It is an application of an old, in fact the oldest, analysis technique for structural brain MR imaging....
"uses a fifteen minute MRI scan"... a very common, standard MR brain scan, followed by many hours of counting the voxels (volumetric pixels) in the area of interest. Followed by many more hours of the same, to estimate the reliability using inter-rater testing, necessary due to variations in size, shape, density, etc. of the region examined, between individuals.
Ten years ago applying the technique to corpus collosum imaging rather than the usual grey matter was new. Given that the 'technique' consists of lots of counting, it gets old quickly.
It's becoming more obvious that false statements can be made without risking accusations of ethics violation as long as the publication appears in a non-peer reviewed 'journal'.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I can do it more accurately than that. And without any false positives whatsoever! (I might have a few misses, but that's a minority.)
No, the MRI images the brain, it does not test for imaginary poison, that is the most idiotic thing I have read today. The ONLY study that linked Autism to vaccines was debunked, it was an obvious greed grab by a criminal, who was in fact a greedy pharma wannabee... Andrew Wakefield, the criminal fake scientist started this bullshit because he had already started the patent process for his own "safer" version of the vaccine.
People were not diagnosed before because the classification is fairly new. Because there was no industry around it, because there was no Americans with Disability act to force schools to do something for students with learning disabilities, and because our society was a little bit different. The 1980s saw a culture where "being in therapy" no longer held a stigma, and was often held in pop-culture as a positive thing, so is it any wonder that people who grew up in this new culture with a positive attitude toward psychology had their kids evaluated, whereas the people of the 1950s who grew up in a culture where mental illness was considered shameful did not?
You are right, many people were not diagnosed, at least not publicly... instead they were labeled "retarded" and shipped into group homes, or for the less "severe" they just had to deal with their differences in private.
Of course the wiki gives a similar example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem#Example_1:_Drug_testing
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
...movement.
If this test does mature into a (much) more reliable diagnostic tool, and can be made accurate enough to be useful, early diagnosis will significantly increase the number of children diagnosed with autism.
I'm sure the anti-vaccine, anti-science contingent will completely misunderstand the issue and blame the increase in autism diagnoses on the H1N1 vaccine, or whatever tomorrow's boogeyman is.
Doesn't something like 90% of the population fall somewhere on the autistic spectrum as it is? ;o
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Not really -- the problem is with the base rate fallacy. Suppose that there's a test that will tell you whether or not you have a disease with 99% accuracy: if you have it, you're 99% likely to test positive; if you don't have it, you're 99% likely to test negative.
Now, you get a test and it's positive. What's your probability of having the disease?
The answer is, "There's not enough information to answer the question." The missing piece of information is the "base rate".
Suppose that 50% of the people have the disease. Then in testing 1 million people, 500K will have the disease, of which 495K will come back positive (true positive), and 5K the test will come back negative (false negatives). 500K will not have the disease, of which 495k will come back negative (true negative), and 5k will come back positive (false positive). If the test came back positive, you're either a true positive or a false positive. Since there are 500K positives, and 495K of those are true positives, your chances of having the disease are 99%.
Suppose instead that 1% of people have the disease. Then in testing 1 million people, 990K will not have the disease, and 10K will have it. Of the 990K, 980K will come back negative (true negative) and 10K will come back positive (false positive). Of the 10K, 9900 will come back positive (true positive), and 100 will come back negative (false negative). There are 19,900 who tested positive, of which only 9900 (less than half) actually have the disease. So if you tested positive, your chances are about 50%.
So even if the test itself is very accurate (and I think 99% is pretty accurate), if the base rate is low enough (and in autism I believe it's still less than 1%), a positive reading may not be conclusive. You'd have to correlate it with other symptoms to make sure.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
read "Why autism can't be diagnosed with brain scans" at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/aug/12/autism-brain-scan-statistics
Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
with your lack of comprehension.
Lets make it simple for you:
Test is devised to find out if MRI can detect autism.
It can detect people with autism with a 90% rate.*
Refinement is needed.
Your complaint is like going to 1912 and telling Goddard since his first rocket liquid fueled rocket won't go to the moon, his research is useless.
It's a good discovery that has promise.
*this does NOT mean 9 out of 10. IT means that the closer you get to edge cases the more likely it will fail.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There are 440 characters in the text of the summary plus the introduction you speak of. Disregarding ends-of-lines or the actual URL embedded in the text.
Definitely.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I'll be genuinely impressed - and eager to put myself under the magnet - if it can reliably distinguish between autism spectrum disorders and highly sensitive people (http://www.hsperson.com/pages/2Aug09.htm).
This is total irresponsible science media reporting. This should be downranked into oblivion.
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People wonder why the cost of health care is spiralling out of control. MRI scans are a very EXPENSIVE way to diagnose anything. I fear the additional cost (via increased demand) of scans will only put greater pressure on health care budgeting. I can already see greedy marketroids wringing their hands in anticipation of the forthcoming lucre.
check out my comic: Essential Tremors
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml ... Quick info: To lower risk of autism, Dr. Cannell recommends at least 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day for pregnant women. For autistic children, Dr. Cannell recommends at least 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 per every 25 pounds of body weight per day, with frequent [blood test] monitoring of 25(OH)D, targeting 100 ng/mL (250 nmol/L)."
"It is plausible that vitamin D deficiency is a major contributing factor to the onset and progression of autism. Though only still a theory, first put forth by Vitamin D Council Executive Director Dr. John Cannell, the idea of a major role for vitamin D in the etiology of autism is gaining momentum. From Harvard scientists to Swedish research teams, more and more scientists are examining the possible link between vitamin D deficiency and autism in the hopes that Cannell's theory will hold up against scientific scrutiny -- what would herald the discovery of a simple, natural solution to an increasingly-common, and very tragic, condition.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Tom Cruise is that you? On Slashdot? Wow.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
There's highly functional and poorly functional people all over the world. Some of them probably have atypically nuerological wiring and others dont.
It fascinates me that these are considered disorders when there are so many famous, successful and exceptionally brilliant people that apparently have 'a problem' yet are also on top of the pack... I've always felt that ASD, Bi-polar and other such 'dissorders' are merely reflective of a different state of being.
Never mind that though... you can just imagine what things could have been like if we had this screening ability in schools years ago
Teacher/Nurse: "Well Master Gates, Master Einstein we're sorry to advise that you have ASD. Clearly this places you in a position of disadvantage so you'll never be able to get anywhere or do anything in life, but we CAN give you some lollies!"
Gates/Einstein [Priority Override. New objective]: "Nom nom nom nom"
1: source and qualification.
2: Are there positive or negative effects of being diagnosed and put on the trial and error treatment process until something is found to help you in the long term, or treatment stopped.
and retorically.
Would you rather be diagnosed with something, given treatment which may well help you. Or, not be diagnosed with something, when you may have something similar but not quite the it, and the med's help anyway but you won't be allowed them because your condition doesn't have a little box for you to fit in.
But Dr I have cancer, can't you at least give me radiotherapy.
I'm sorry sir, but that has only been proven to work in cancer of the bowel and spleen, you have cancer of the elbow so we'll just have to wait and see if it develops to the bowel or spleen then we may be able to treat you, if it's the correct colour.
Incidentally I have ASD and ADHD (with as greater degree of confidence as I have about anything), I can easily spot similar behaviours etc.. in other people and then go on to tell them pretty much exactly how they are thinking (I'll tell different people different things, and also ask them the other things just to check they don't hit that as well to build a better picture) and how they have been all their lives. I'd put the rates of people that I've done this to as high as 25% in adults (restricted social group[high self medication rates]).
Due to a lack of diagnosis criteria in adults and the complexities of diagnosis as well as the failure of the NHS to follow NICE guidelines and possible prejudice against certain activities (against their membership of the GMC, indoctrination via government propaganda)[some forms of self medication for instance]. I was diagnosed with a serious mental health condition, put on the serious mental health register, and given hard core treatment [chemical lobotomy], that was the opposite of what I should have been on, which they continued for years even though they said it wasn't working.
Given the serious ramifications of not being diagnosed correctly with ADHD/ADD for instance (high rates of crime, stock market crashes and that kind of thing), along with the even more serious problems associated with the classical alternative diagnosis [child hood schizophrenia is the old diagnosis]. What do you think they should do?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.