Autism spectrum disorder now affects roughly 1 in 36 children, and for families of children who are minimally verbal, communication is often the single most pressing challenge — shaping the child’s ability to learn, connect, and gain independence for life.
Because the stakes are so high, parents actively seek out every credible therapy, which makes rigorous evidence especially important.
This study is significant for measuring HBOT’s effect on language specifically. It compared 65 children with autism: 32 received a minimum of 40 HBOT sessions (100% oxygen at 2.0 ATA for 60 minutes) alongside applied behavior analysis (ABA), while the rest received ABA alone.
The children who also received HBOT gained substantially more verbal skills — on the VB-MAPP language assessment, their improvement was more than three times larger than the ABA-only group. A related language measure also favored HBOT, though with more variability. (Note: a correction to this paper was published in August 2025; the underlying findings stand.) <view study>