What Explains High Autism Rates Among Somali Immigrants?

A medical mystery is brewing in Minnesota, U.S.A, where thirty to sixty thousand Somali refugees and their families have settled and where, increasingly, that community's children are experiencing high rates of autism. According to an article in the New York Times, while about 6% of the Minneapolis public school population is Somali, they represented 25% of the students enrolled in special preschool classes for children with autism. And a Somali father is quoted as saying he knows ten other dads, all from Somalia and living in the US, who have autistic kids. What can explain this alarming and sad development?

Nobody is quite sure, just as nobody knows for certain that it even is a meaningful cluster; public health officials are trying to determine whether Somali communities in other cities are experiencing the same rates of autism. But if the number of Somali kids with autism in Minneapolis means anything, it's too early yet for anyone to determine that meaning, much less to figure out whether there's anything to be done to lower it. Clusters of non-contagious disease can indicate environmental causes, such as mesothelioma among people working near asbestos, and then that cause can be attacked. But so far no environmental cause has been found — and health workers are concerned that anti-vaccine crusaders are now taking their message to the Somali community, a population that often travels back to the home country, where measles remains rampant. It's probably only a matter of time before an outbreak affects any un-vaccinated Somali kids.

A disease without a known cause appears to be rampaging through a community that has already weathered much hardship. Let's hope someone can help solve the mystery and bring them some much-needed help.

Photo: Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times