One in 58 children may have a form of autism, according to a new study. Seven academics from Cambridge university, six from its Autism Research Centre, studied local children. They found that autism or an autistic-spectrum disorder was significantly above the current estimate of one in 100. Nationally, their findings extrapolate to approximately 210,000 autistic children under the age of 16. Two academics said that the high figure may be linked to the controversial MMR vaccine, but this has been rejected by the team leader, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen.