Autistic girls much less likely to be diagnosed, study says

Patient advocates say the research supports arguments that there are systemic biases in understanding and diagnosing autism. Photograph: Thomas Holt/Shutterstock

Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study.

Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Sweden between 1985 and 2020. Of the 2.7 million people tracked, 2.8% were diagnosed with autism between the ages of two and 37.