Assessment of medical morbidities in a rhesus monkey model of naturally occurring low sociality.
Low-social monkeys get injured more often, backing a primate model for medical risk in ASD.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Redquest et al. (2021) tracked medical records of rhesus monkeys that lived in the same colony.
They compared monkeys born with naturally low social interest to highly social cage-mates.
The team counted every cut, bite, or broken bone that needed veterinary care.
What they found
Low-social monkeys got hurt more often than their social peers.
The injuries matched the higher accident rates seen in people with autism.
The result supports using these monkeys to study medical risks tied to poor social skills.
How this fits with other research
Guinchat et al. (2015) saw the same pattern in teens. Their study showed that autistic in-patients improved fastest when doctors first treated hidden pain or illness.
Cashon et al. (2013) surveyed people with autism, Williams, and Down syndromes. They found that autistic individuals felt least at risk and had the weakest safety nets, echoing the monkeys’ higher injury load.
Bradford et al. (2018) linked poor emotion control to worse social scores in youth with ASD. Together the papers build a chain: weak social skills → less risk awareness → more physical harm.
Why it matters
The monkey data remind you to treat social deficits as a safety issue, not just a social one. Screen for untreated pain when clients show new self-injury or aggression. Add safety drills that teach danger cues and where to find help. These steps may prevent the injuries the monkeys and human studies predict.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit a variety of medical morbidities at significantly higher rates than the general population. Using an established monkey model of naturally occurring low sociality, we investigated whether low-social monkeys show an increased burden of medical morbidities compared to their high-social counterparts. We systematically reviewed the medical records of N = 152 (n = 73 low-social; n = 79 high-social) rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to assess the number of traumatic injury, gastrointestinal, and inflammatory events, as well as the presence of rare medical conditions. Subjects' nonsocial scores, determined by the frequency they were observed in a nonsocial state (i.e., alone), and macaque Social Responsiveness Scale-Revised (mSRS-R) scores were also used to test whether individual differences in social functioning were related to medical morbidity burden. Medical morbidity type significantly differed by group, such that low-social monkeys incurred higher rates of traumatic injury compared to high-social monkeys. Nonsocial scores and mSRS-R scores also significantly and positively predicted traumatic injury rates, indicating that monkeys with the greatest social impairment were most impacted on this health measure. These findings from low-social monkeys are consistent with well-documented evidence that people with ASD incur a greater number of traumatic injuries and receive more peer bullying than their neurotypical peers, and add to growing evidence for the face validity of this primate model. LAY SUMMARY: People with autism exhibit multiple medical problems at higher rates than the general population. We conducted a comprehensive medical record review of monkeys that naturally exhibit differences in sociality and found that low-social monkeys are more susceptible to traumatic injuries than high-social monkeys. These results are consistent with reports that people with autism also incur greater traumatic injury and peer bullying and add to growing evidence for the validity of this monkey model.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2021 · doi:10.2147/PHMT.S85717