NEWS BRIEFING: Early help can reduce autism behaviours in kids

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-09-21 01:00

Australia; VIC; WA

*RECORDING AVAILABLE* An Australian study has shown that early intervention with a therapy designed to help parents better understand and respond to the communication cues of their baby, can reduce autism diagnoses in kids that had early signs of the condition – the first time this has been demonstrated worldwide. The study of over 100 babies aged 9-14 months who were exhibiting early signs of autism, showed the therapy reduced the social communication difficulties characteristic of autism, and reduced autism diagnosis at age three by two thirds.

Media release

From: Australian Science Media Centre

An Australian study has shown that early intervention with a therapy designed to help parents better understand and respond to the communication cues of their baby, can reduce autism diagnoses in kids that had early signs of the condition – the first time this has been demonstrated worldwide.

The study of over 100 babies aged 9-14 months who were exhibiting early signs of autism, showed the therapy reduced the social communication difficulties characteristic of autism, and reduced autism diagnosis at age three by two thirds.

Join the briefing to hear from the Australian experts leading the study.

Speakers:

Professor Andrew Whitehouse is the Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research at the Telethon Kids Institute and The University of Western Australia and Director of CliniKids
Kristelle Hudry is Associate Professor with the Department of Psychology and Counselling, School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University

Date: Mon 20 Sept 2021
Start Time: 10:00am AEST
Duration: Approx 45 min
Venue: Online - Zoom

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Research JAMA, Web page Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).

Briefing recording Australian Science Media Centre, Web page Briefing recording playback

Journal/
conference: JAMA Pediatrics

Organisation/s: Telethon Kids Institute, The University of Western Australia, La Trobe University, Australian Science Media Centre

Funder: This study was sponsored by the Telethon Kids Institute and supported by grants 1077966 and 1173896 from the National Health and Medical Research Council (Dr Whitehouse) and funding from the AngelaWright Bennett Foundation (Dr Whitehouse), the Telethon-Perth Children’s Hospital Research Fund (Drs Whitehouse, Wray, J. Green, and Segal), the La Trobe University Understanding Disease Research Focus Area (Drs Hudry, Dissanayake, Barbaro, Iacono, Slonims, J. Green, and Whitehouse), and the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC) established and supported by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centre Program (Drs Hudry, Whitehouse, Barbaro, Iacono, Dissanayake, and Maybery).

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