Fig 1.
PRISMA flow chart of included studies.
Shows the study selection process with numbers excluded at each stage.
Table 1.
Characteristics of included studies.
Table 2.
Quality of included studies.
Fig 2.
Overall severity of autism symptoms.
Panel a–ADOS total scores. Panel b–Calibrated Severity Scores. MD–mean difference (difference in points on the scale from baseline to follow-up).
Fig 3.
Severity of autism symptom subdomains.
Panel a–social affect. Panel b–restricted and repetitive behaviour. MD–mean difference (difference in points on the scale from baseline to follow-up).
Fig 4.
Proportion meeting diagnostic criteria.
Panel a–autism spectrum disorder. Panel b–autism. RD–risk difference (difference in percentage of participants meeting the cut-off from baseline to follow-up).
Table 3.
Random effects meta-analyses and linear mixed-effects meta-regression models.
Fig 5.
Results of meta-regression analyses.
Shows magnitude of changes as a function of follow-up duration. Circles represent individual studies, with circle sizes representing sample sizes.