Dr. Debra Soh on health: what the evidence says · JRE #2082

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Multiple peer-reviewed studies, including a large-sample analysis of 641,860 individuals published in Nature Communications (2020) and a 2022 systematic review/meta-analysis, have found that transgender and gender-diverse people, including those with gender dysphoria, show elevated rates of autism diagnoses and autistic traits compared with cisgender populations; the meta-analysis put pooled autism diagnosis prevalence at about 11% among people with gender dysphoria, versus roughly 1-2% in the general population. A 2025 Swedish cohort study similarly found about 7.8 times higher relative risk of an autism diagnosis among people with gender dysphoria, though it found no relationship between autism status and the severity of gender incongruence within that group. Researchers describe this as a well-documented co-occurrence or statistical association rather than settled proof of a causal or explanatory link, and reviewers note significant heterogeneity across studies and ongoing debate about the mechanisms (shared genetic/neurodevelopmental factors, social camouflaging, diagnostic overshadowing, or referral bias) underlying the association. Soh's core claim, that studies document elevated co-occurrence of autism traits and gender dysphoria in a subset of people, is supported by the literature, though the phrase "it's legitimate" implies a settled explanatory relationship that current evidence does not establish.