Autism & Aging, Part One: What Global Experts Want Us to Know About Autistic Adults and Seniors

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Autism & Aging: Adult Health Risks and Care Gaps

Autism research focuses more on children than other age groups; funding and public attention follow that focus, too. That’s mostly because early childhood intervention strategies are so important for long-term outcomes.

But autistic advocates and autism experts say it’s time to consider what happens when lifelong autism converges with the challenges of aging. In October 2025, a United Nations think tank convened to discuss the needs and concerns of autistic people who are getting older.

Who Sits at the Table?
Many of the experts who participated in this think tank are allistic, with years of experience in medicine, research, behavior, and psychology. Importantly, several autistic advocates also contributed to the conversation, sharing both their lived experience and their professional expertise. Inclusive discussions like this one are important to a full understanding of autism across the life span.

What Health Risks Are More Common in Older Autistic Adults?

Autistic advocates and autism experts called attention to several age-related health conditions that are more prevalent in autistic individuals than they are in the general population, including these:

Heart disease
Hypertension
Falls
Ocular conditions
Epilepsy
Hormone disruption
Gastrointestinal conditions
Parkinson’s
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Mobility issues
Suicidal ideation (United Nations, 2025, 31:32)

As people age, their health needs naturally become more complex. That may mean they’re consulting an ever-greater number of specialists. Karen Turner, MS/OTR/L, who is the patient navigator for autism and developmental disabilities at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the increase in specialist visits can lead to “fragmentation of care”—at a time when many autistic individuals may be losing family caregivers who coordinated diverse medical services.

“The value of support persons as advocates and facilitators for communication cannot be overstated,” Turner explained. “For the autistic adult, supports, whether a spouse or partner or sibling, may also be aging and less available to directly assist.” (United Nations, 2025, 33:26)

“The world—at least the world where I’m living—is mostly geared for young autistic people. As you get older, needs change, and yet services don’t change...”

–Wenn Lawson, PhD, AFBPsS, MAPs
Autistic consultant and adjunct associate professor, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

Special Consideration: Autism & Cancer Care

Diagnosing and treating cancer can be especially challenging for autistic people for many reasons, including these:

Autistic individuals are less likely to receive recommended screenings, which may mean they’re diagnosed when cancer is at a later stage.
The difficulty of navigating health systems can delay treatment.
Autistic individuals in cancer care may have longer hospital stays, and they are more likely to have adverse complications after treatment.

Mary Doherty, PhD, MB, BCh, BAO is clinical associate professor at University College Dublin School of Medicine, founder of Autistic Doctors International, and a consultant anesthetist at Our Lady’s Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. She explained, “If you turn up with advanced stage cancer, your outcomes are so much worse from the start of that journey than if you’d turned up earlier. People need more extensive surgery, more extensive treatment than if they had turned up sooner. We absolutely need to get this knowledge to providers, but also to the autistic community as well” (United Nations, 2025, 1:09:55).

Special Consideration: Autism & Dementia

Abra Chauhan, PhD, is head of the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory at the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities. She described the biological factors that contribute to higher dementia risk in autism.

Blood samples, post-mortem brain tissue samples, and muscle biopsy samples of autistic individuals show:

greater oxidative stress,
mitochondrial dysfunction,
chronic inflammation,
brain development differences, and
genetic or epigenetic variations (United Nations, 2025, 1:18:31).

“Interestingly, these are the same biological mechanisms that play a very important role in the aging process and in age-related neurological diseases, including dementia, Parkinson’s, and other neurological diseases,” she said (United Nations, 2025, 1:20:24).

Dr. Chauhan recommended that providers focus on modifiable risk factors like overall cardiovascular health, diet, sleep, and alcohol consumption. She also recommended early assessment of cognitive functioning along with tests that check for biomarkers of oxidative stress and the presence of amyloid plaques in the brain, which are associated with dementia.

Key Messages

Autistic adults experience a higher prevalence of certain health conditions as they age, which can pose more of a challenge as their family members age, too. Professor David Nicholas, PhD, acting dean of social work at the University of Calgary, said “There is substantial need for capacity-building and training among interprofessional healthcare teams and providers in supporting the range of needs of autistic seniors in long-term care and medical settings.” Dr. Nicholas encouraged providers in these fields to maintain a “human rights perspective, with principles such as agency and self-determination among aging autistic people” (United Nations, 2025, 36:49).