A recent study conducted by University College London researchers indicates that the actual number of autistic individuals in England could be over twice the figure commonly referenced in national health policy papers.
The first-of-its-kind research, published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe, aimed to gauge the number of adults in England who might have undiagnosed autism.
To do this, the researchers calculated the number of people who had received an autism diagnosis, from anonymized data from more than 5 million individuals registered at GP practices in England between 2000 and 2018.
They then compared these figures with a lower (c.1%) and upper (c.3%) estimate of how common autism really is in the population. The lower estimate was based on the widely stated figure that around 1% of people in England are autistic. This came from epidemiological research published in 2011, before changes to the diagnostic criteria for autism that made them more inclusive.
