ADHD, Autism, And Connective Tissue Disorders, Explained

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about the higher incidence of premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, among women with ADHD.

But according to a new analysis, it seems neurodivergent people of all genders might be more likely to face a group of conditions known as connective tissue disorders.

The finding, which is based on health data from 117 million US adults and teens aged 15 and over, found that the issues were “consistently more common” among people who weren’t neurodivergent, and “were most likely for patients who were diagnosed with ASD [autism] and ADHD”.

These include many diseases and disorders that affect the tissue that supports our organs, body structure, and muscles. They might impact people’s bones, ligaments, skin, cartilage, and tendons.

Per the Cleveland Clinic, “as these tissues are in almost every part of your body, connective tissue diseases can also affect you all over. They might affect one or two types of tissues throughout your body or many. They can also affect many organs”.

Connective tissue disorders can present as hypermobility (being able to move your joints or body parts outside of their usual range), Ehlers-Danlos and Marfan syndrome, and inflammatory conditions like lupus.

This analysis suggested that the breakdown was as follows:

• People with both ADHD and autism were 4.38x more likely to have an inherited structural connective tissue disorder and 3.4x likelier to have a hypermobility spectrum disorder,
• People with ADHD only were 1.7x more likely to have an inherited structural connective tissue disorder and 1.48x likelier to have a hypermobility spectrum disorder,
• People with autism only were 3.11x more likely to have an inherited structural connective tissue disorder and 2.03x likelier to have a hypermobility spectrum disorder.

Overall, connective tissue disorders were still relatively rare in these groups – heritable structural disorders were seen in roughly 12 out of 1,000 autism-only patients and 21 per 1,000 patients with both ADHD and autism.

But that’s a big leap from the comparison sample without either ADHD or autism – among those, the disorders appeared in 3 or 4 per 1,000 cases.

Previous research had suggested that “In neurodivergent adults, there is a strong link between the expression of joint hypermobility, dysautonomia, and pain, more so than in the comparison group”.

Some studies have shown that people with the connective tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome are more likely to have autism and/or ADHD.