Motor Disturbances in Autistic Children.;case Control Study

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Background Children with autism have developmental motor profile that differ from other healthy children. This is evident since early childhood, sometime noted by parents and neglected by clinicians. These motor deficits are related to other domains of dysfunction in children with autism as social and language skills. Improving motor deficits can help better prognosis for these children. Aim To detect motor deficits in a sample of autistic children and correlate them with the severity of autistic symptoms. Methods We recruited 20 autistic children ranging from 3 to 6 yrs from the Institute of psychiatry outpatient child psychiatry and rehabilitation clinics of Ain-Shams university hospital. We excluded patient with total intelligence less than 75 or having other developmental disorder. We matched them with healthy controls for age and sex and compared both motor development and self help skills using Brigance scale. We confirmed diagnosis of autism in each patient by applying ICD-10 criteria of autism by a senior psychiatrist and by having a Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) score above 30. Relation of autism severity and motor deficits was assessed later by Correlation co-efficient test. Results Compared to controls, autistic children showed statistically significant low Brigance test scores on; gross movement, fine movement and self-help skills subdomains. Motor delay was significantly correlated with the severity of autism. Conclusions Motor deficits were evident in autistic patients and could indicate severity