“Gastrointestinal complaints more common in adults with autism, new study finds”

Adults with autism or relatively many autism characteristics more often have gastrointestinal complaints than people without autism or people with few autism characteristics. This emerged from research by Eva Warreman, a psychiatrist in training at the LUMC. “It is important that healthcare providers do not fixate on the diagnosis of autism, but are alert to misunderstood or chronic gastrointestinal complaints in a broader group of people.” In addition, factors such as stress, anxiety, depression and poorer reported health in autism were associated with gastrointestinal complaints.

We know from the literature that adults with autism more often have gastrointestinal complaints than adults without autism, says Eva Warreman (in training to become a psychiatrist at LUMC and PhD candidate at LUMC Curium). For the research she conducted as part of her PhD trajectory, recently published in Autism, Warreman collaborated with a project group from the Academic Workshop Autism, consisting of researchers, caregivers and experts with autism.1 “From conversations with these experts, it appeared that many people with autism do indeed suffer from gastrointestinal complaints. It has a major impact on their quality of life and the subject is therefore very much alive within the world of autism.” However, the relationship between these gastrointestinal complaints and biological, psychological and behavioral factors in people with (characteristics of) autism was still unclear. “In our research, we therefore not only looked at the occurrence of gastrointestinal complaints in adults with (characteristics of) autism, but also at which biological, psychological and behavioral factors are associated with this.