Our research
Autistic people are at an increased risk of developing co-occurring health conditions. These include mental health conditions, such as anxiety disorders and depression, and somatic conditions, such as gastrointestinal and cardiovascular conditions. Our research has four main goals:
- To identify the main health challenges that autistic people experience at different stages of their lives. This has involved using registry-based epidemiological study designs to explore the rate at which autistic people are diagnosed with different health conditions throughout their lives. We also use genetically informative designs to help generate insights into the kinds of health challenges that autistic people may face with age.
- To understand the mechanisms underlying the associations between autism and co-occurring conditions. We use genetically informative study designs to try to understand the degree to which genetic and environmental factors play a role.
- To highlight specific risk factors for health conditions in autistic people. We use registry data in Sweden to identify specific non-genetic factors that might elevate the risk of adverse health outcomes in autistic people. We are also interested in the role of systems-level factors, such as healthcare inaccessibility, and we combine register-based epidemiology with mixed-methods surveys.
- To evaluate treatments and interventions for co-occurring health conditions in autistic people. We also explore whether certain treatments inadvertently have an impact on autistic people’s health.
We use registers to investigate these research areas, however we also engage with the wider community and use survey-based and mixed-methods approaches to ensure that our research is meaningful to the wider autism community.