Recently, a new study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and it suggested that the number of children who have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was much higher than previously believed.

After considering the total population of South Korea as a sample, the researchers estimate that 1 in 38 children in the country was grappling with some or the other form of autism whereas earlier researchers had examined only children with the neurological disorder or at high risk of developing it in the future.

Another crucial finding of the study suggests that more girls fall under the autism umbrella than previously thought and the researchers believe that if similar studies were conducted in other countries, the prevalence estimates would also go up.

To reach at these conclusions, the researchers included 55,000 school children from a large metropolitan community of Seoul. Out of 286 students, who went for full clinical evaluation, 201 were diagnosed with some form of autism.

Dr. Young Shin Kim, lead author of the study and Assistant Professor at the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine, stated, “The study doesn't mean that suddenly many more children have autism. Instead, they have been there all along but they were not counted in previous prevalence studies”.