Mortality rate and age of death among Medicare-enrolled autistic older adults

Background: An emerging body of evidence suggests that autistic people are at greater risk for mortality than non-autistic people. Yet, relatively little is known about mortality rates among autistic people during older adulthood (i.e., age 65 or older). Methods: We examined 5-year mortality among a national US sample of Medicare-enrolled autistic (n = 3308) and non-autistic (n = 33,080) adults aged 65 or older. Results: Autistic older adults had 2.87 times greater rate of mortality (95 % CI = 2.61-3.07) than non-autistic older adults. Among decedents (39.6 % of autistic and 15.1 % of non-autistic older adults), the median age of death was 72 years (IQR = 69-78) for autistic and 75 years (IQR=70-83) for non-autistic older adults. Among autistic older adults, those with intellectual disability had 1.57 times greater rate of mortality (95 % CI = 1.41-1.76) than those without, and males had 1.27 times greater rate of mortality (95 % CI = 1.12-1.43) than females. Conclusions: Many trends regarding mortality observed in younger samples of autistic people were also observed in our study. However, we found only a three-year difference in median age at death between autistic and non-autistic decedents, which is a much smaller disparity than re-ported in some other studies. This potentially suggests that when autistic people live to the age of 65, they may live to a more similar age as non-autistic peers.