High-Resolution Mapping of Healthcare Pathways in Autism
Abstract
Autistic children and adolescents experience substantial psychiatric and somatic comorbidity, but whether this excess morbidity follows structured diagnostic patterns or temporal trajectories remains unclear. We conducted a nationwide register-based study of 101,521 autistic individuals in Sweden and 958,093 age- and sex-matched peers, followed from birth through early life until a median age of 19.8 years. Across 12.86 million diagnostic codes from 9.49 million inpatient and specialist outpatient healthcare encounters, autistic individuals had increased risk of 165 of 187 examined conditions. Excess morbidity was not diffusely distributed across the phenome, but clustered into seven distinct, system-dominant domains. Temporal trajectory analyses further showed that autism-enriched diagnostic sequences were concentrated within respiratory, congenital, and mental-injury/poisoning-related domains. These findings indicate that morbidity in autistic young people is both clinically structured and temporally organized, providing a population-level framework for understanding the concentrated domains that drive excess healthcare burden.
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BibTeX
@misc{huang2026highresolution,
title = {{High-Resolution Mapping of Healthcare Pathways in Autism}},
author = {Like Huang and Tai Ren and Can Hou and Fang Fang and Jakob Grove and Zhenzhen Xie and Yiwei Pu and Diana Schendel and Brian K. Lee and Fei Li and Viktor H. Ahlqvist},
howpublished = {medRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.30.26366679},
url = {https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.30.26366679v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - High-Resolution Mapping of Healthcare Pathways in Autism
AU - Like Huang
AU - Tai Ren
AU - Can Hou
AU - Fang Fang
AU - Jakob Grove
AU - Zhenzhen Xie
AU - Yiwei Pu
AU - Diana Schendel
AU - Brian K. Lee
AU - Fei Li
AU - Viktor H. Ahlqvist
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - medRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.30.26366679
UR - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.30.26366679v1
AB - Autistic children and adolescents experience substantial psychiatric and somatic comorbidity, but whether this excess morbidity follows structured diagnostic patterns or temporal trajectories remains unclear. We conducted a nationwide register-based study of 101,521 autistic individuals in Sweden and 958,093 age- and sex-matched peers, followed from birth through early life until a median age of 19.8 years. Across 12.86 million diagnostic codes from 9.49 million inpatient and specialist outpatient healthcare encounters, autistic individuals had increased risk of 165 of 187 examined conditions. Excess morbidity was not diffusely distributed across the phenome, but clustered into seven distinct, system-dominant domains. Temporal trajectory analyses further showed that autism-enriched diagnostic sequences were concentrated within respiratory, congenital, and mental-injury/poisoning-related domains. These findings indicate that morbidity in autistic young people is both clinically structured and temporally organized, providing a population-level framework for understanding the concentrated domains that drive excess healthcare burden.
ER -