[Autism in the first year]

At present autism can be diagnosed with a high degree of reliability between the ages of 18 months and 2 years. Yet, the first symptoms are already present long before the diagnosis is made. This has led to a number of retrospective and prospective studies being conducted with the aim of detecting manifestations that allow a diagnosis to be reached as early as possible. The results of these studies have enabled researchers to detect symptoms that appear between the ages of 6 and 12 months. Although it has been observed that these symptoms are of limited diagnostic interest, they do provide invaluable information for the understanding of autism within the framework of neurodevelopmental disorders because they highlight a pattern of development that is initially common to several different disorders, but which progressively goes on to constitute a specific phenotype.