Mortality and Causes of Death in Pervasive Developmental Disorders

In the present study, we rediagnosed and followed a clinical sample of 341 children with related pervasive developmental disorders for an average of 24 years (current mean age of 31 years; range 14-48 years). Twelve patients had died. For the whole group crude mortality was 3.5 percent (95 percent Confidence Interval 1.8-6.1 percent). The standardized mortality ratio was 1.9 (95 percent Confidence Interval 1.0-3.4). For the diagnostic subgroups crude mortality was: infantile autism 3.4 percent, autistic-like conditions 3.4 percent, borderline childhood psychosis 2.5 percent and disintegrative psychosis 15.4 percent. Mortality was related to intelligence in a U-shaped fashion, with both severe retardation and normal intelligence being associated with a relatively high risk of death. The distribution between natural causes and unnatural causes of death (accidents, suicide) resembled the pattern seen in a background population of adolescents and younger adults. Five of the 12 deaths were related to epilepsy.