Autism prodrome 3 of 89
Introduction
Along with other neurodevelopmental disorders with childhood onset, interest
in studying the prodrome of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has grown
considerably over the past decade. Many of the reasons for this are shared in common
with other conditions covered in this special issue. The primary motivation for
identifying the earliest signs of emerging ASDs is the desire to develop and test early
or even ‘preventative’ interventions to lessen morbidity by changing the course of
early emerging developmental perturbation, thus preventing ‘secondary’
neurodevelopmental disturbances (Dawson, 2008; Mundy, Sullivan, & Mastergeorge,
2009).
In medicine, prodrome refers to the early sign/s or symptom/s indicating the
development of a disease, or indicating that a disease attack is imminent. It is the
premonitory or warning symptom for a certain disease. Thus, "prodrome" status refers
to the time frame beginning with the initial onset of clinical signs that do not meet the
diagnostic criteria required for the disease or disorder, up to the time in which the
clinical symptoms fulfill the required criteria for the disease or disorder. Therefore,
the prodrome is always defined retrospectively, and necessitates that the disease will
follow the earlier clinical signs, markers or precursors which constitute the prodrome.
These prodromal early signs may be biological or/and behavioral and once identified
may be informative to attempts to eliminate, prevent and/or treat the disease itself.
Yet, a disease or a disorder may also appear with no identifiable preceding prodrome.
In the field of developmental psychopathology, risk factors are referred to as
factors that may characterize a certain group of individuals, some of whom will also
manifest the associated vulnerability with the vulnerability referring to the prodrome
and/or the disease/disorder. Thus, whereas the prodrome refers to signs that precede