「自閉症は小さな頃から見抜くことができる?」"Detection of autism when kids are still small"
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University of Cambridge has published a research on how Q-CHAT (a test to assess whether kids have autism) can be used to test kid's autism from early on in their life. They tested 4000 kids at 18 months using Q-CHAT, and followed up until 4 years old.
The results have suggested that sensitivity (proportion which autism kids are correctly diagnosed as autism) for using Q-CHAT to assess kids at early on was 44%, while the specificity (proportion which kids who doesn't have autism gets diagnosed as not having autism) was 98%. Also, all 11 kids who were diagnosed as autism at 18months had autism when they were tested at 4 years old.
These test results suggests that Q-CHAT can be used to diagnose autism earlier on in their life when there are some symptoms already.
This early diagnosis allows parents to be prepared and look at different possibilities on how those kids should be raised depending on their characteristics.