A new type of early intervention could prove effective in reducing the chances of being diagnosed with autism in children who present with symptoms in the first few months of life. The strategy in question is called iBASIS-VIPP (Video Interaction to Promote Positive Parenting), and aims to educate parents to a better understanding of the communicative characteristics of their children, so that they contribute to optimizing the social and communicative development of children in the very first years of life, when the chances of concrete and lasting improvements are theoretically higher. To confirm its effectiveness is a study on 103 Australian children Telethon Kids Institute published in Jama Pediatrics, the results of which would indicate a three times lower probability of an autism diagnosis for at-risk children undergoing iBASIS-VIPP therapy, compared to those treated with the current standard of care.
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Currently, in fact, therapies are usually started only at the time of a definitive diagnosis, which cannot be made before the third year of life. Many experts believe that intervening even earlier would increase the chances of success, but attempts in this direction to date have never yielded particularly encouraging results. However, the new study – its authors write – starts from some recent discoveries on neurocognitive development in the very first years of life, and in particular, on the important role that parental behaviors can play in improving any critical issues in the development of children. It therefore represents an innovative strategy, which aims to personalize the interventions on the needs and characteristics of the individual child, creating around him a social environment that helps him to learn in the way that is most congenial to him. Thus differentiating himself from many of the therapeutic approaches experimented previously, which – he explains Andrew Whitehouse, research coordinator – “rather aimed at replacing atypical behaviors identified in children with those observed in children without developmental disorders”.
The use of videos
The iBASIS-VIPP protocol is based on the intervention of a therapist who is helped by the use of video supports, both to show positive examples of adult / child interactions, and to record those that emerge between parents and small patients during the sessions, so to be able to re-examine them later to identify the aspects on which to work. This is a strategy that had already been tested previously with a study that followed a group of children with symptoms attributable to an autism spectrum disorder up to the age of 18 months, and which, while demonstrating that the therapy is free from harmful side effects, however, had not produced reliable data on its effectiveness.
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The new study started from here, following the children recruited in the previous study up to the age of three, to verify whether the incidence of autism spectrum disorders diagnosed was lower than that of the children in the control group, undergoing the so-called “usual care”, that is to the therapies normally prescribed by the specialists of the area in which the research was carried out. And this time, the effects of IBASIS-VIPP therapy showed themselves: in the group undergoing the treatment, the diagnoses of autism were three times lower than those of the control group.
“Even the children in our study who remained below the symptom threshold necessary for a diagnosis still showed developmental difficulties – explains Whitehouse – but our approach, which aims to work with each child’s unique developmental differences , and not to try to eliminate them, however, it has shown that it can effectively support their development in the first years of life ”.
Long-term studies but great optimism
Further research will therefore be needed to verify the long-term impact of IBASIS-VIPP therapy, and evaluate its effects in the more advanced stages of life, when the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders become more evident, and more debilitating. Whitehouse, however, is extremely optimistic. “This is the first time that a preventive intervention shows such an effect on the probability of diagnosis”, concludes the Australian expert. “This is a defining moment for pediatric research. A fundamental step forward in what we hope will prove to be a unique opportunity to develop a new clinical approach, which aims at extremely early interventions on children who show the first possible behavioral signs of autism ”.
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