Higher scores on autonomic symptom scales in pediatric patients with neurodevelopmental disorders of known genetic etiology.

Abstract

Features of underlying autonomic dysfunction, including sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal problems, and atypical heart rate, have been reported in neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current cross-sectional, between-groups study aimed to quantify symptoms of autonomic dysfunction in a neurodevelopmental pediatric cohort characterized by clinical diagnoses as well as genetic etiology. The Pediatric Autonomic Symptom Scales (PASS) questionnaire was used to assess autonomic features across a group of patients with clinical neurodevelopmental diagnoses (NPD; N=90) and genetic etiologies. Patients were subdivided based on either having a clinical ASD diagnosis (NPD-ASD; n=37) or other non-ASD neurodevelopmental diagnoses, such as intellectual disability without ASD, speech and language disorders, and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (NPD-OTHER; n=53). Analyses focused on characterizing differences between the NPD group compared to previously published reference samples, as well as differences between the two NPD subgroups (NPD-ASD and NPD-OTHER). Our results indicate higher PASS scores in our NPD cohort relative to children with and without ASD from a previously published cohort. However, we did not identify significant group differences between our NPD-ASD and NPD-OTHER subgroups. Furthermore, we find a significant relationship between quantitative ASD traits and symptoms of autonomic function. This work demonstrates the utility of capturing quantitative estimates of autonomic trait dimensions that may be significantly linked with psychosocial impairments and other core clinical features of ASD.