A recent analysis of 338,415 health records found that males are being diagnosed with autism earlier in life while the age for females has remained static, and many are not diagnosed until adulthood. In 2024, 44% of boys were diagnosed before age 5 while only 34% of girls were diagnosed before age 5. Epic Research—the data and analytics arm of Epic Systems, an electronic health record software company—analyzed the records of patients with a pattern of established care who received their first ASD diagnosis between 2015 and 2024. While not peer-reviewed, Epic Research’s work is vetted internally by the company’s clinical and research experts.
More than half of both females and males received a diagnosis after age 5. Twenty-five percent of females were diagnosed with autism at age 19 or older, more than double the diagnoses among males (12%). Autism diagnoses for males are occurring earlier with the median age dropping from 7 to 5, and the average age dropping from 10 to 9 between 2015 and 2024. For females, the median age of diagnosis has remained at age 8, while the average age increased from almost 12 in 2015 to 13 years in 2024.
The overall average age at ASD diagnosis remained stable at around 10.5 years, while the median age decreased from 7 in 2015 to 6 in 2024. The report released by Epic noted that an average higher than the median typically reflects a small but significant group being diagnosed much later, potentially into adulthood, which pulls the average upward.
The analysis highlights the disparity and the need to close the gap. In an article on the ABC News website, Dr. Catherine Lord, the George Tarjan Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Education in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, explained that “therapies, school accommodations, and interventions—often involving speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and developmental pediatricians—are most effective when started early in life. The biggest time of change, particularly in developing language, is in the early years. Interventions can speed up learning and help prevent later anxiety and depression by making life easier for autistic kids and their families.” Dr. Lord was not a part of the Epic team that analyzed the records.
Sherri Alms is the freelance editor of The OARacle, a role she took on in 2007. She has been a freelance writer and editor for more than 20 years.
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