Effective medical treatment may allow a child with autism to respond better to educational and behavioral interventions as well as to other types of therapies.

Autism is a common, chronic disease and patients with autism require a medical home. Certain health factors may make autism worse and behavior worse. The purpose of this article is to describe how doctors can manage autism as a chronic disease. The main treatments for autism are behavioral and include applied behavior analysis (ABA). Drug therapy may be useful if target symptoms are severe and do not respond to behavioral interventions.