Objective To investigate whether children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), who attended a paediatric outpatient clinic, had a different prevalence of overweight or obesity and/or nutritional deficiencies compared to children without ASD and/or ADHD.
Design Pilot, retrospective cohort study on electronic medical records.
Setting A single-centre paediatric outpatient clinic in Sydney, Australia.
Participants Participants were selected from 462 occasions of service between January 2017 – June 2018. Eligible participants were aged 2.0-15.9 years, attended an appointment at the outpatient clinic during the specified timeframe, and had clinical notes in the electronic medical records. Duplicate patients were excluded.
Main outcome measures Nature of diagnosis (ASD, ADHD, or neither), weight status (underweight, healthy, overweight, obesity), micronutrient deficiency (iron and Vitamin D).
Results 60 participants were included in this study. Quarter (21.5%) of the patients with ASD and 33.3% of patients with ADHD had overweight or obesity compared to 16.2% of patients without either diagnosis. Higher proportions of vitamin deficiencies were observed for patients with ASD and ADHD compared to patients with neither diagnosis (p = 0.008). In patients with ASD, an iron deficiency was observed in 14.3% and a vitamin D deficiency in 64%. In patients with ADHD, there were no cases of iron deficiency; vitamin D deficiencies were seen in 44.4%. In patients with neither diagnosis, 5% had an iron deficiency and 14% had a vitamin D deficiency.
Conclusion Childhood ASD and/or ADHD may be a risk factor for childhood overweight and obesity. Further, there is evidence of a trend of a higher prevalence of vitamin D and iron deficiencies for children with ASD and/or ADHD. As this is a vulnerable paediatric population, future research should be conducted to validate these trends and inform health service planning in the affected community.