Health-related quality of life in children with autism spectrum disorder and children with down syndrome

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine health – related quality of life (HRQoL) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with Down syndrome (DS). Methods: The study was based on measurements in a sample of 206 children with ASD (61), DS (55) and typical development (TD) (90), aged 5-10 years old, after administering anonymous questionnaires to their parents - caregivers. The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory ™ 4.0 Generic Core Scales – Parent Report (PedsQL™ 4.0) was used to measure health-related quality of life. The one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) was applied to compare means of the three samples. Results: The post-hoc comparisons (Tukey) revealed that the statistically univariate effect was due to differences between the TD group and the other two groups, ASD and DS (p<0.01). The TD group scored higher in all comparisons. The ASD group achieved significantly lower scores than their peers with DS in the emotional functioning scale. The post-hoc analysis did not reveal any significant differences between the DS and the ASD group in the physical health, psychosocial health and the total PedsQL summary scores. Conclusions: Children with ASD and DS had significantly lower HRQoL compared to a TD population, and this finding was not affected by age. Children with ASD demonstrated a significantly lower score in the emotional functioning scale than children with DS and they scored as poorly as children with DS in the physical health scale. It is thus considered necessary to take the physical health scale into account when assessing and designing treatment for children with ASD. Future research study should focus on HRQoL indicators that could serve as a standard diagnostic tool for the development of the therapies and the outcome of assessment findings in ASD and DS.