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Article History

Received: 21 November 2024

Accepted: 18 December 2025

First Online: 12 January 2026

Declarations

:

: Ethical approval was confirmed as part of the ISAC protocol application submission. We received initial ISAC approval from the MHRA Independent Scientific Advisory Committee for protocol 20_000067 on November 13th, 2020 and access to linked Covid-19 data was confirmed via post-approval amendments. CPRD utilizes retrospective, routinely collected National Health Service data for pre-approved public health research purposes only. Patients cannot be identified based on the data that CPRD receives from GP practices, and individual GP practices choose whether or not to share patient data with CPRD. Individual patients are able to opt-out of sharing their data for research; in cases where patients opt-out, CPRD does not collect data for these patients. As noted above, access to CPRD data is only available to researchers with an approved protocol and ethical approval is included in protocol consideration. The Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association are both supportive of GP practices sharing their data with CPRD. Further information can be found at: .

: Not applicable.

: Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen was a founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Autism. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.