The growing challenge of autism spectrum disorder: a comprehensive review of etiology, diagnosis, and therapy in children

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social communication deficits and other behavioral issues. Autism, escalating as a global health concern, has yielded substantial discoveries in the past 40 years. This paper presents a comprehensive review that summarizes the progress in the etiology, diagnosis, and therapy of autism in children. We searched for potentially relevant studies in three databases (Web of Science, PubMed and CINAHL) from inception until March 2024. In addition, we manually searched the bibliographies of the included studies to find articles that might otherwise have been missed. The search strategy was defined by identifying key terms from the research question related to ‘autism', and ‘etiology', ‘diagnosis' and ‘therapy'. To reduce the number of papers cited, the most recent review papers and meta-analyses were used whenever possible. We selected papers based on our judgement of the quality of the study or review paper, its relevance to controversial or commonly misunderstood issues, and whether the findings were clinically relevant. Finally, this paper summarizes the current status of autism research, looks forward to future research directions, and calls for more research to explore the pathogenic mechanisms, diagnostic basis, and therapeutic methods of autism.

Keywords

• autism spectrum disorder
• etiology
• diagnosis
• therapy