Autism and Hypermobility
Background
Recent surveys in the autism community suggest that autistic people report higher rates of joint hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) than non-autistic people (Ward et al., 2023). This fits with other research linking autism with connective tissue conditions (Baeza-Velasco et al., 2025). But EDS is not the same for everyone: it comes in different subtypes, and people can be affected in different ways.
We want to understand how EDS shows up in autistic people, and whether it looks different from EDS in non-autistic people. For example, autistic people might be more likely to have a particular subtype of EDS.
Method
Working with the autistic community, we will create a questionnaire (a “hypermobility quotient”) to measure signs and symptoms of hypermobility and EDS in autistic people. We will then test and improve this questionnaire, and use it with non-autistic groups too, including people with and without EDS.
Community Engagement
In the first phase, we will ask autistic people who have EDS to share their experiences of EDS and hypermobility. We will use what they tell us to improve our assessment tool, so that real lived experience shapes how we measure and describe EDS.
Potential Impact
If autism is linked to a particular subtype of EDS, this could help us understand how EDS affects autistic people and could support better clinical assessment. More broadly, as we continue to study autism and physical health, finding out whether a specific EDS subtype is more common in autism could tell us more about health and quality of life for autistic people.
Results
We expect to have results by the end of 2027. When they are ready, we will post a summary of the main findings on this page.
Staff:
- Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen
- Professor Carrie Allison
- Dr Matt Fysh
- Dr Alex Tsompanidis
- Dr Elizabeth Weir
- Dr Kevin A. Matlock
- Omar Al-Rubaie