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Comorbidity Between Autistic Syndrome and Biological Pathologies: Which Implications for the Understanding of the Etiology?

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Abstract

It is estimated that at least 24% of cases of autism are potentially associated with other syndromes, to infective, metabolic or genetic pathologies, and to anatomical or functional alterations. Problems connected with interpretation of the association between biological damage and autistic behavioral phenotype in causal terms are briefly exposed. Three critical periods for the beginning of an anomalous behavioral development in the child with autism are identified: prenatal, prior to 9 months from birth, after 1 year of age. Psychopathological consequences potentially deriving from biological damages on every critical period are described, and their compatibility with the characteristic behavioral features observed in individuals affected by autism is discussed. On this basis, a theoretical model that represents infantile autism as a specie-specific human psychopathology of early emotional communication during the primary intersubjectivity stage is proposed.

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    Giorgio Celani

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Celani, G. Comorbidity Between Autistic Syndrome and Biological Pathologies: Which Implications for the Understanding of the Etiology?. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities 15, 141–154 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022875300575

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