Autism encompasses a broad range of brain disorders that, by conservative estimates, affects 1 in 500 children. Autism-Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) include Asperger’s Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), Rett Syndrome (which affects only girls) and Autism. Autism Spectrum Disorders impair three main areas of human development: speech, communication and soci...

Background: There has been concern that the incidence of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) is increasing. Previous studies have been smaller, restricted to autism (excluding other pervasive developmental disorders such as Asperger's syndrome), included boys only, or have not been based on a national sample. We investigated time trends in the rates of diagnosis of pervasi...

With the aim of analyzing which complementary tests are relevant in the diagnostic evaluation of individuals with pervasive developmental disorders, a protocol of clinical and laboratory evaluation was applied in 103 outpatients. The protocol included chromosomal analysis, screening for inborn errors of metabolism, cytogenetic and molecular study of the FRAXA, FRAXE, and FRAXF mutations, EEG, S...

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) present significant difficulties to understand and express emotions. Systems have thus been proposed to provide objective measurements of acoustic features used by children suffering from ASD to encode emotion in speech. However, only a few studies have exploited such systems to compare different groups of children in their ability to express emotio...

we reports a six-year-old child with autistic disorder and methadone intoxication. developmental disorders may mislead the caretakers and doctors to interpret the clinical manifestation and behavioral changes of these patients. methadone indigestion can be fatal in children even in a tiny amount and cardiac monitoring should be performed at least for the first 24 hours. the pervasive prescripti...

Pervasive developmental disorder is characterized by various symptoms that often include self-injurious behavior (SIB). Episodes of SIB occur in the context of high emotional arousal, anger, or fear and may be related to epilepsy. We report the case of a 20-year-old man with pervasive developmental disorder presenting with SIB non-responsive to antipsychotic medication. Positron emission tomogr...