How many children have Tourettes syndrome? What percentage of the population is affected? What is the prevalence of Tourettes?
Accurate figures are hard to come by because good broad-based population studies have not been done. Further, since tics tend to remit or subside as children mature, fewer adults have Tourette’s, and population estimates on adults may underestimate the prevalence rates in children. Another complication in prevalence estimates is that most mild Tourette’s syndrome may never come to diagnostic attention. The studies which have looked at prevalence of Tourette’s have varying methodology, reflect different levels of ascertainment bias, and applied different criteria to the diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome. The bottom line is that you will encounter varying estimates of the prevalence from official sources.
