The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a 30% increase in suicides in the United States from 2000 to 2016, with rates increasing in all age groups.¹ However, adolescents are of particular concern, with increases in social media use, anxiety, depression, and self-inflicted injuries.² The CDC reported suicide rates in youths aged 15 to 24 years, but a more detailed analysis of the trends in this age group is needed, as well as examination of the most recent available data to determine if the increase in suicide rates is continuing.

Infants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were recently found to have prolonged auditory brainstem response (ABR); however, at older ages, findings are contradictory. We compared ABR differences between participants with ASD and controls with respect to age using a meta‐analysis. Data sources included MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, Google Scholar, HOLLIS, and ScienceDirect from their inception to June 2016. The 25 studies that were included had a total of 1349 participants (727 participants with ASD and 622 controls) and an age range of 0–40 years. Prolongation of the absolute latency of wave V in ASD had a significant negative correlation with age (R2 = 0.23; P = 0.01). The 22 studies below age 18 years showed a significantly prolonged wave V in ASD (Standard Mean Difference = 0.6 [95% CI, 0.5–0.8]; P < 0.001). The 3 studies above 18 years of age showed a significantly shorter wave V in ASD (SMD = −0.6 [95% CI, −1.0 to −0.2]; P = 0.004). Prolonged ABR was consistent in infants and children with ASD, suggesting it can serve as an ASD biomarker at infancy. As the ABR is routinely used to screen infants for hearing impairment, the opportunity for replication studies is extensive. Autism Res 2018, 11: 355–363. © 2017 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Lay Summary: Our analysis of previous studies showed that infants and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a slower brain response to sound, while adults have a faster brain response to sound. This suggests that slower brain response in infants may predict ASD risk. Brain response to sound is routinely tested on newborns to screen hearing impairment, which has created large data sets to afford replication of these results.

Previous studies report prolonged auditory brainstem response (ABR) in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite its promise as a biomarker, it is unclear whether healthy newborns who later develop ASD also show ABR abnormalities. In the current study, we extracted ABR data on 139,154 newborns from their Universal Newborn Hearing Screening, including 321 newborns who were later diagnosed with ASD. We found that the ASD newborns had significant prolongations of their ABR phase and V‐negative latency compared with the non‐ASD newborns. Newborns in the ASD group also exhibited greater variance in their latencies compared to previous studies in older ASD samples, likely due in part to the low intensity of the ABR stimulus. These findings suggest that newborns display neurophysiological variation associated with ASD at birth. Future studies with higher‐intensity stimulus ABRs may allow more accurate predictions of ASD risk, which could augment the universal ABR test that currently screens millions of newborns worldwide.Lay Summary: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have slow brain responses to sounds. We examined these brain responses from newborns' hearing tests and found that newborns who were later diagnosed with autism also had slower brain responses to sounds. Future studies might use these findings to better predict autism risk, with a hearing test that is already used on millions of newborns worldwide.

Aim: To quantify the healthcare costs associated with opioid use disorder among members in a public healthcare system and compare them with healthcare costs in the general population.Design: Retrospective cohort study.Setting: Inpatient and outpatient care settings of Israel's largest public healthcare provider (that covers 4.7 million members).Participants: Participants included 1173 members who had a diagnosis of opioid use disorder in the years between 2013 and 2018. Each patient was matched with 10 controls based on age and sex.Measurements: The main outcome was monthly healthcare costs.Findings: The mean monthly healthcare cost of members with opioid use disorder was $1102 compared with $211 among controls (5.2‐fold difference; 95% CI, 4.6–6.0). After excluding members with heroin related diagnoses before the index date (to focus on prescription opioids), this healthcare cost ratio did not substantially change (4.6‐fold; 95% CI, 3.9–5.4). Members with opioid use disorder under the age of 65 years had a cost difference of 6.1‐fold (95% CI, 5.2–7.1), whereas those 65 years and older experienced cost difference of 3.4‐fold (95% CI, 2.6–4.5), compared with controls. The category with the highest cost for members with opioid use disorder was inpatient services, which was 8.7‐fold (95%CI, 7.2–10.4) greater than among controls.Conclusions: Healthcare costs among individuals with opioid use disorder in Israel's public health system are substantially higher than among controls, at least partially attributable to prescription opioid use disorder. Differences are greater among individuals under 65 years.