The A.J. Drexel Autism Institute presents Diana Schendel, PhD, Aarhus University.

The dramatic autism prevalence increase in the U.S. and abroad which began about 30 years ago has yet to stabilize, and the autism prevalence ‘wave’ has been a significant stimulus for the search for autism causes. Two decades later, much has been learned about the environmental and genetic components of autism risk architecture – including the substantial genetic and non-genetic risk overlap across autism and other psychiatric disorders - but integration of these two substantial risk components at the population level is still in its infancy. Meanwhile the personal and societal consequences of autism continue to unfold as the growing numbers of autistic children and adolescents become adults. This presentation will bring together findings from Dr. Schendel's work across these three autism research areas – prevalence patterns, risk factor epidemiology, life course outcomes – as the basis for ongoing and future research in modifiable risk factors, such as: factors underlying sex-specific age of diagnosis, focusing on diagnosis into adolescence especially among females; tackling multiple, complementary risk factors while accounting for both familial and genetic factors, and investigating overlapping outcome phenotypes to elucidate risk mechanisms; and modifiable risks for co-occurring conditions and other adverse life course outcomes.