Why So Many Autistic Girls Are Being Overlooked: Lisa Jarvis

For decades, autism was believed to overwhelmingly affect boys. Yet a big new study out of Sweden provides perhaps the best evidence yet that girls aren’t less likely to be autistic — they’re just less likely to be diagnosed young.

Researchers looked across 35 years of health records for nearly 2.8 million people (an incredibly complete window into their lives thanks to Sweden’s universal health care system). They found that whether it was 2025 or 1995, boys under 10 were three to four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls. But by adulthood, the gap had nearly ...