A federal committee remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on April 28 published proposals to revamp diagnosing and treating people with autism spectrum disorder.
The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee said in one proposal that a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should make clear that doctors should be prepared to recognize and treat new issues that occur in autistic people, such as seizures and difficulty sleeping.
The committee said that despite evidence showing new symptoms require treatment, “clinical care remains inconsistent and fragmented across settings.” The symptoms “can be overlooked, deferred, treated as secondary to behavior, or not systematically elicited at all,” it said….