Dr. Sergiu Pașcă

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

Well, autism is a complex condition.

It's a spectrum, as you said.

In a way, you could say autism and neurodevelopmental disorders.

It's behaviorally defined.

There's no biomarker.

So in a way, it's a condition that is defined exclusively by observing behavior, which is actually the case for most psychiatric disorders.

But it's essentially diagnosed by the presence and absence of certain behaviors in a certain period of time or up to a certain age.

And, of course, what triggered, I think, a lot of discussions in recent years is because the number or the prevalence of autism has increased.

So now it's close to almost 3% of the general population, which, of course, it's a big number.

3%?

Almost 3%, yes.

Wow.

So that has increased even since I was in medical school.

When I was in medical school, actually, it was considered a rare disease.

The reason why I actually studied autism, because it was a very rare disease and we had very few resources, so we thought studying a rare disease would be easier.

But now we also know so much more about this condition.

So we do know, for instance, that there is a strong genetic component to it.

which for a while, obviously, we didn't.