Abstract
BackgroundReliable and easy to administer screening instruments focusing on neurodevelopmental disorders and associated conditions are scarce. The Autism–Tics, AD/HD and other Comorbidities inventory (A-TAC) has previously been validated and reporting good– excellent validity for several disorders. This article aims to expand these findings by including more conditions in a substantially larger sample augmented with the Swedish National Patient Register (NPR).MethodsSince 2004 parents of all 9-year-old Swedish twins have been invited to participate in a telephone interview in the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden, CATSS. The CATSS is linked to the NPR which includes data from in- and outpatient care. Data on neurodevelopmental disorders (A-TAC) collected in CATSS were compared with diagnoses from the NPR. We investigated diagnoses that had been made both before (previous validity) and after (predictive validity) the interview.ResultsSensitivity and specificity of A-TAC scores for predicting earlier or later clinical diagnoses were mostly good–excellent, with values of the area under the curve for a clinical diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) of .98, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) .93, learning disorder (LD) .92, and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) .99, with small differences in terms of previous and predictive analyses. A-TAC provided little validity for eating disorders.ConclusionThe result support previous claims: A-TAC is a broad screening instrument with a particular strength in assessing ASD, ADHD, LD, and ODD at ages 9 and 12, and also provides phenotypic information about other child psychiatric disorders.
Highlights
Reliable and easy to administer screening instruments focusing on neurodevelopmental disorders and associated conditions are scarce
The negative predictive value (NPV) was high (0.999 and 0.998 respectively) while the positive predictive value (PPV) was low for both cut-off values (0.02 and 0.1), the screening cut-off showed the highest diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) value (48)
The results for the age-specific groups, i.e. 9- respective 12-year-olds, are available as supplementary material (Additional file 3). These results showed a similar pattern as the collapsed group with the only exception for the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) module for the 12-year olds which displayed an excellent predictive validity (AUC = 0.99) with an excellent sensitivity (1.0) and specificity (0.98)
Summary
Reliable and easy to administer screening instruments focusing on neurodevelopmental disorders and associated conditions are scarce. Childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorders, commonly lumped together under the concept of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), affect at least 7–10% of all children [1]. They have traditionally been considered as distinct and separate from each other, each with a course of its own. Today it is acknowledged that NDDs share symptomatology [1, 2] follow a waxing and waning course [3], and can be unstable within a diagnostic category over time [4, 5]. Taken together, validated screening instruments that dimensionally assess the symptomatology
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