Factors associated with autism severity among Malaysian children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Eow SY 1 , Gan WY 2 , Lim PY 3 , Awang H 4 , Mohd Shariff Z 1

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. Electronic address: wanying@upm.edu.my
  • 3 Department of Community Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 4 Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Res Dev Disabil, 2020 May;100:103632.
PMID: 32179381 DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103632

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) of different levels of symptom severity may exhibit a wide range of behaviours and characteristics. There is a limited nutrition-related study on children with ASD of different severity in Malaysia.

AIMS: This cross-sectional study aims to determine the association between sociodemographic factors, parental factors, and lifestyle factors with autism severity in children with ASD.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES: A total of 224 children with ASD were included in this study. Their mothers completed a self-administered questionnaire on sociodemographic characteristics, autism severity, parenting style, parental feeding practices, parenting stress, child's sleep habits and eating behaviours.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: As high as 78.1 % of the children with ASD demonstrated a high level of autism severity. Multiple linear regression showed that father's employment status (B = 6.970, 95 % CI = 3.172, 10.768, p 

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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