Perspective Biological Markers for Autism Spectrum Disorders: Advantages of the Use of Receiver Operating Characteristic Curves in Evaluating Marker Sensitivity and Specificity

Figure 1

Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve showing sensitivity as a function of 1 − specificity of erythrocyte Na⁺K⁺-ATPase activity in ASD and typically developing children. This is an example of a ROC curve obtained when the values of the two groups (autistic and typically developing children) do not overlap. When the AUC value is 1.00, the curve degenerates into a segment which lies parallel to the -axis on top of the graph. The parameter of the figure was previously published by our group [56]. Values are shown in Table 7. ROC curve analysis was based on nonparametric methods. The confidence intervals of ROC curves were set at 95%.