Abstract
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are etiologically related neurodevelopmental disorders with an onset age before 18 years and a reported comorbidity of 2.9–20%. The aim of the present study was to identify the incidence of ASD in a large clinical sample of individuals affected by GTS and to compare our results with previously reported incidences. We retrospectively analyzed clinical data (n = 1200) from January 2010 to March 2019 obtained from the outpatient Catania Tourette Clinic, part of the Child and Adolescent Neurology and Psychiatry of the Medical and Experimental Department of Catania University. We used internationally validated evaluation tools. The neuropsychological evaluation was carried out by an expert and a certificated team of child and adolescent neurologists, supervised by two expert child neurologists (R.R. and M.G.). We investigated 975 GTS-affected individuals of various socioeconomic levels aged 5–18 years, and 8.9% (n = 87) were affected by ASD. The incidence of GTS with ASD was significantly lower (p < 0.001) in children than in adolescents. No statistically significant differences were found in the sex distribution and age of onset of tics between individuals with GTS alone and those with GTS and ASD. The incidence of GTS and ASD comorbidity in this study was high, and this has several implications in terms of treatment and prognosis.
Highlights
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by the presence of motor tics and at least one vocal tic that occurs for more than one year, with an onset age before 18 years (APA) [1]
Medical professionals often find it difficult to define the disorder that best describes a child’s symptoms [31]; (iii) we found that among the individuals diagnosed with GTS, 8.9% (n = 87) had Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
To verify the concordance of the data, we reviewed the literature in light of our results and found a limited number of studies that reported the incidence of ASD in GTS in the clinical population
Summary
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by the presence of motor tics and at least one vocal tic that occurs for more than one year, with an onset age before 18 years (APA) [1]. Several comorbidities are reported in association with GTS, such as obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety [4], depression [5], and ASD [6,7,8,9,10]. As far as we know, the incidence of GTS and comorbid ASD has not been studied as extensively. This could be because the phenomenology of these comorbidities is not well known
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