Until this decade, many adults with autism went undiagnosed, and those who had the social prowess to forge romantic relationships were considered «vanishingly
rare,» says Matthew Lerner, assistant professor of psychology,
psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University
in New York.
«Seeing a pure syndrome —
in which the patient only shows the symptoms of one disorder without any symptoms of another — is pretty
rare,» says Charles Nemeroff, MD, PhD, chairman of the University of Miami Health System's department of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences.