Archival ReportCompared to What? Early Brain Overgrowth in Autism and the Perils of Population Norms
Section snippets
Systematic Review
Three authors (A.R., G.L.W., L.A.) independently carried out an electronic literature search (PubMed [National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland], EMBASE [Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands]; start of records until June 30, 2012) and manual bibliography search to identify all available studies of HC in children with ASD. Electronic literature search terms included: AUT*, ASPERGER*, ASD, PERVASIVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER, PDD, HEAD CIRCUMFERENCE, OFC, and OVERGROWTH. For a study to enter
Systematic Review
Table 1 lists the 34 studies identified by our systematic review 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 35, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, according to publication date and study characteristics.
Survey of Normative Data Used to Test EBO Hypothesis in ASD. Of the 34 studies identified, 21 studies made exclusive use of HC norms as comparison data when testing the EBO hypothesis, 8 studies used both norms and locally recruited control
Discussion
Our systematic review identifies several lines of evidence that the use of HC population norms has introduced systematic age-dependent biases in studies of early brain growth in ASD. We were able to replicate and better specify the nature of these age-dependent HC norm biases by analyzing a new set of HC data in children with ASD against different sources of control data.
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