Posted: March 21 2007 at 1:49pm | IP Logged

Sorry about the format - I copied this from another forum and it was in this state and I don't have time to reformat it.  The article is not online yet.

Autism: It's Not Just in the Head
The devastating derangements of autism also show up in the gut and
in the
immune system. That unexpected discovery is sparking new treatments
that
target the body in addition to the brain

By Jill Neimark for Discover Magazine.

"There were days I considered shutting the garage door and
letting the
car run until I was dead," says Colorado mom Erin Griffin, of the
time nine
years ago when she learned that both her boys-not just her
firstborn-suffered from autism. Brendan, her angular, dark-haired
older
child, was diagnosed in 1996 at age 4. Kyle, her round-faced, hazel-
eyed
younger son, was diagnosed in 1998 at age 2 1/2.
But Kyle and Brendan's story does not have a tragic ending.
After
interventions that included occupational and speech therapy, as well
as
dietary change and nutritional supplements, both boys improved
significantly. Their tale of slow, steady recovery reflects the
changing
landscape of autism today. The condition, traditionally seen as
genetic and
originating in the brain, is starting to be viewed in a broader and
very
different light, as a possible immune and neuroinflammatory
disorder. As a
result, autism is beginning to look like a condition that can, in
some and
perhaps many cases, be successfully treated.
That is astonishing news about a disorder that usually makes
headlines
because it seems to be growing rapidly more widespread. In the United
States, the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders has increased
about
tenfold over the past two decades, and a 2003 report by the Centers
for
Disease Control suggests that as many as one in every 166 children
is now on
the autism spectrum, while another one in six suffers from a
neurodevelopmental delay. This explosion of cases has raised
countless
questions: Is the increase real, is it the result of increased
awareness and
expanding diagnostic categories, is it due to environmental changes,
or all
of the above? There may be no single answer. But the public concern
about
autism has caught the ear of federal lawmakers. The Combating Autism
Act,
approved last December, authorized nearly $1 billion over the next
four
years for autism-related research and intervention.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines of that confusing discussion, a
disparate
group-immunologists , naturopaths, neuroscientists, and toxicologists-
is
turning up clues that are yielding novel strategies to help autistic
patients. New studies are examining contributing factors ranging from
vaccine reactions to atypical growth in the placenta, abnormal
tissue in the
gut, inflamed tissue in the brain, food allergies, and disturbed
brain wave
synchrony. Some clinicians are using genetic test results to
recommend
unconventional nutritional therapies, and others employ drugs to
fight
viruses and quell inflammation.

Above all, there is a new emphasis on the interaction between
vulnerable genes and environmental triggers, along with a growing
sense that
low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a major
contributing factor to autism and its related disorders. A vivid
analogy is
that genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. "Like
cancer,
autism is a very complex disease," says Craig Newschaffer; chairman
of
Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University School of
Public
Health, "and it's exciting to start asking questions about the
interaction
between genes and environment. There's really a very rich array of
potential
exposure variables."
In one way, the field seems like a free-for-all, staggeringly
disordered because it is littered with so many possibilities. But
one can
distill a few revolutionary insights. First, autism may not be
rigidly
determined but instead may be related to common gene variants, called
polymorphisms, that may be derailed by environmental triggers.
Second,
affected genes may disturb fundamental pathways in the body and lead
to
chronic inflammation across the brain, immune system, and digestive
system.
Third, inflammation is treatable.
"In spite of so many years of assumptions that a brain
disorder like
this is not treatable, we're helping kids get better. So it can't
just be
genetic, prenatal, hardwired, and hopeless," says Harvard pediatric
neurologist Martha Herbert, author of a 14,OOO -word paper in the
journal
Clinical Neuropsychiatry that reconceptualizes the universe of
autism,
pulling the brain down from its privileged perch as an organ
isolated from
the rest of the body. Herbert is well suited to this task, a
synthetic
thinker who wrote her dissertation on the developmental psychologist
Jean
Piaget and who then went to medical school late, in her early
thirties.
"I no longer see autism as a disorder of the brain but as a
disor¬der
that affects the brain," Herbert says. "It also affects the immune
system
and the gut. One very striking piece of evidence many of us have
noticed is
that when autistic children go in for certain diag¬nostic tests and
are told
not to eat or drink anything ahead of time, parents often report
their
child's symptoms improve-until they start eating again after the
procedure.
If symptoms can improve in such a short time frame simply by avoiding
exposure to foods, then we're looking at some kind of chemically
driven
'software' -perhaps im¬mune system signals-that can change fast.
This means
that at least some of autism probably comes from a kind of metabolic
en¬cephalopathy- a system wide process that affects the brain, just
like
cirrhosis of the liver affects the brain."
In 1943 Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Leo Kanner first
described autism as a now-famous collection of symptoms: poor social
engagement, limited verbal and nonverbal communication, and
repetitive
behaviors. Back then, autism was considered rare; Kanner first
reported on
just 11 patients, and Johns Hopkins still has records of about 150
patients
he examined in total. Even within this small group of patients,
other, less
visible symptoms were evident. In his 1943 paper, "Autistic
Disturbances of
Affective Contact," Kan¬ner noted immune and digestive problems but
did not
include them in the diagnosis. One reads with a shiver sentences
lifted out
of vari¬ous case histories: "large and ragged tonsils. . . she was
tube-fed
five times daily. . . he vomited all food from birth through the
third
month. . . he suffered from repeated colds and otitis media. . . ."
Herbert believes that the clues linking the obvious behavioral
symptoms to more basic, but less obvious, biological dysfunction
were missed
early on. "What I believe is happening is that genes and environment
interact, either in a fetus or young child, chang¬ing cellular
function
allover the body, which then affects tissue and metabolism in many
vulnerable organs. And it's the interaction of this collection of
troubles
that leads to altered sensory processing and impaired coordination
in the
brain. A brain with these kinds of problems produces the abnormal
behaviors
that we call autism."
Herbert's full-body perspective helps make sense of the
contu¬sion
surrounding the diagnosis of autism and helps justify the
in¬creasingly
common use of the plural "autisms" to describe the wide variations
in this
disorder. As Newschaffer points out, "Children with Asperger's
syndrome
certainly share a lot of the behaviors of those with more severe
autism. But
is it the same disease, and is it caused by the same thing? A number
of
significant features of autism are not part of the diagnostic schema
right
now, but eventually, those features may end up distinguishing one
causal
pathway from an¬other. How is a child sleeping? Does he or she have
gastrointestinal symptoms? By looking at those things we may see
risk-factor
as¬sociations pop out that we've never seen before."
Herbert likens autism to a hologram: "Everything that
fascinates me is
in it. It's got epidemiology, toxicology, philosophy of science,
biochemistry, genetics, systems theory, the collapse of the medi¬cal
system,
and the failure of managed care. Each child that walks through my
door is a
challenge to everything I ever knew, and each child forces me to
think
outside the box and between categories."
Each child's path to autism may be distinct, she says, but
they may
share common inflammatory abnormalities. She has shown through
morphometric
brain imaging that white matter-which car¬ries impulses between
neurons-is
larger in children with autism.
"It was the most absolutely outstanding piece of information
in all
the brain data looked at," Herbert recalls of the years 2001 and
2002, when
she was analyzing this brain imaging data. "People were saying,
don't look
at the white matter, look at the cerebral cortex, but I knew we had
an
important finding."
Could white matter become chronically inflamed? It may well be,
according to new research from Carlos Pardo, a neurologist at Johns
Hopkins.
In a 2005 study in the Annals of Neurology, he found inflammation in
immune-responsive brain cells of autistic pa¬tients. "Patients with
autism
report lots of immunological problems. We looked for the
fingerprints of
those problems in the brain," says Pardo. "We had brain tissue from
autistic
individuals as young as 5 and as old as 45 and we found neuroglial
inflamma¬tion in all of them. Neuroglia are a group of brain cells
that are
iljPOl1ant in the brain's immune response. This inflam¬matory
reaction
appears to happen both early and late in the course of the
disor¬der. If it
happens early, it could dramatically influence brain develop¬ment.
We're
very excited about this research because one potential treatment
approach,
then, is to downregulate the brain's immune response." To study that
approach, Pardo is collaborating on a pilot study funded by the NIH
to test
minocycline, an anti-inflammatory antibiotic drug, on autistic
children.
"Minocycline is a very selective downregulator of microglial
inflammation, "
he says. "Neurologists already use it in multiple sclerosis and
Parkinson's. "
"What we've got here is a far more comprehensive set of
char¬acteristics for autism," says Herbert, "one that can include
behavior,
cognition, sensorimotor, gut, immune, brain, and endocrine
abnor¬malities.
These are ongoing problems, and they're not confined just to the
brain. I
can't think of it as a coincidence anymore that so many autistic
kids have a
history of food and airborne allergies, or 20 or 30 ear infections,
or
eczema, or chronic diarrhea."
All this marks a Copernican-scale shift in our approach to the
dis¬order. I myself was irresistibly drawn to the subject when
viewing an
online video of a heavily affected 11-year-01d who, after a series of
chelation treatments to remove mercury, announced to his
mother, "Mom, I'm
back from the living dead." The statement was heart¬breaking in its
simple
eloquence. Mercury chelation, in this particular child's case, was a
near
panacea.
Lisa Beck, of Oviedo, Florida, tells a similar story. Her son
Joshua
was diagnosed with autism in 2004 at about age 2. After 18 intensive
months
of treatment that involved chela¬tion-a treatment that draws heavy
met¬als
out of the body-and dietary changes, among other therapies, Josh
appears
neurotypical. "We took him to Dr. Leslie Gavin. a specialist at .
Nemours
Children's Clinic, who administers the ADOS test, a diag¬nostic test
to see
where on the spectrum a child falls," she says. "After the two-hour
evaluation, Gavin said he did not see the criteria for autism. In
her words.
he was 're¬sponsive, curious, and active, able to en¬gage in. the
test
without a problem, able to express himself clearly.'"
But fascinating anecdotes aside, does hard evidence exist of
specific
vulnerabil¬ity genes or how they might impair the im¬mune system.
brain. and
gut-and most important, do we have any rational, reliable approached
to help
repair the damage?
The answer is a provisional yes.
"We're beginning to understand that genetics is really about
vulnerability, " says neuroscientist Pal Levin, director of the
Vanderbilt
Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development. Levitt and his
colleagues
recently discovered that a com¬mon variant of a gene called MET
doubles the
risk of autism. The finding was widely regarded as a breakthrough
because
MET modulates the nervous system, gut, and immune system-just the
kind of
finding that matches up with the emerging new view of autism.
"Everyone was focusing on genes ex¬pressed in the brain," says
Levitt,
"but this gene is important for repair of the intes¬tine and immune
function. And that's re¬ally intriguing because a subset of autistic
children have digestive and immune prob¬lems." Equally interesting
is that
the gene variant occurs in 47 percent of the popula¬tion -in other
words. it
is just one contribut¬ing factor, and it probably works in concert
with
other vulnerability genes. And finally, in a twist that intrigues
other
researchers, the activity of the gene is affected by what is known as
oxidative stress – the kind of damage one sees with excessive
exposure to
toxins. "As we identify other vulnerability genes like this," says
Levitt,
who hopes to engineer a mouse model of this gene variant for
study, "we may
be able to develop effective interventions for children."
In other provocative research, Jill James, director of the
Autism
Metabolic Genomics Laboratory at the Arkansas Children's Hos¬pital
Research
Institute (and professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas
for
Medical Sciences) has found that many children with autism do not
make as
much of a compound called glutathione as neurotypical children do.
Glutathione is the cell's most abundant an¬tioxidant, and it is
crucial for
removing toxins. If cells lack sufficient antioxidants, they
experience
oxidative stress, which is often found with chronic inflammation.
In her most recent study, published in the American Journal of
Medical
Genetics in 2006, James found that common gene vari¬ants that
support the
glutathione pathway may be associated with autism risk.
Intriguingly, this
pathway is linked metabolically to the methylation pathway.
Methylation is a
fundamental biochemical process that helps regulate which genes are
expressed; abnormal methylation can cause disease. Because the
pathway
provides the precursors to glutathione, impairments in methylation
can also
called oxidative stress. "It's very provocative, " James says. "It
suggests
that some autistic behaviors are a neurologic manifestation of a
ge¬netically based systemic, metabolic derangement. " Some of the
ab¬normalities James saw in this study have already been associated
with
gastrointestinal and immunologic dysfunction.
The good news is that oxidative stress in some autistic
children may
be treatable with targeted nutritional intervention. James and her
colleagues have tracked eight autistic children who were taking
supplements
of key nutrients in the methylation pathway-folinic acid,
trimethylglycine,
and methyl-B12-and found a significant in¬crease in important
markers of
methylation and glutathione synthe¬sis. The next step is to see if
the
symptoms improve as well.
James and her colleagues just received a $2.4 million grant
from thA
NIH. Part of which will be the sorting out the relationship between
metabolism, genes, and behavior. "What would be incred¬ible is if we
could
correlate individual differences in behavior with specific abnormal
metabolites, " James says. They will then look at children between 18
to 24
months old, which is usually before autism is diagnosed. That could
help
identify the causes of the disease, as well as permit earlier
intervention.
"We also plan to look at mitochondrial dysfunction, " she
says. "Since
mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of the cell, they're also
the place
where the most free radicals (which playa role in oxidative stress)
are
produced. If the electron transport chain in the mitochondria is
faulty and
you're not efficiently making ATP, you'll produce more free radicals
and
deplete your glutathione. If this hypothesis turns out to be
correct, we can
give nutrients like coen¬zyme Q10, magnesium, and acetyI-L-carnitine
to help
stabilize the mitochondria. Now, this is just a hypothesis, but
that's the
risk you take with science. You make your best guess and you carry
out your
study and you see."
"It's interesting to see metabolic abnormalities addressed
this way,"
says Isaac Pessah, chairman of Molecular Biosciences and director of
Center
for Dis¬ease Prevention at the University of California at Davis. "I
think
glu¬tathione balance in the kids is potentially very important in
terms of
toxic environmental exposures."
There is a growing sense, Pessah adds, that our heavily
indus¬trialized, chemical-soaked environment- and the way it acts on
vulnerable genes in some individuals- may be a major culprit. In
December
2006, Harvard researchers boldly announced in The Lan¬cet that
industrial
chemicals may be impairing the brain develop¬ment of children around
the
entire world. And at a November 2006 conference at the University of
California at Davis's M.I.N.D. Institute, Pessah gathered experts to
discuss
the clinical implications of environmental toxicology in autism. Says
Herbert, 'We discussed the enormous number of chemicals in our
environment
and how little we know about chronic, low-dose, multiple exposures
and
their effect on diseases like autism. Maybe the many autism cases we
are now
seeing are a new illness of the current generation."
Several large-scale, federally funded epidemiological studies
are
-under way to pinpoint possible environmental triggers, as well as
early
biomarkers of autism. 'We have to build a large enough study to be
able to
look at both genes and environment together," says Newschaffer, who
is a
principal investigator on a study by the Cen¬ters for Disease
Control that
will look at 2,700 children over the next five years.
In another ambitious study, called the Autism Birth Cohort,
Co¬lumbia
University and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health will follow
100,000
pregnant women for 72 months, studying their health and genetics and
testing
everything from blood to urine samples. The hope is to discover
environmental factors that contribute to autism risk, from diet or
infection
to toxins like heavy metals, pesti¬cides, and the countless synthetic
molecules in products today.
Other large, NIH- and EPA-funded studies are teasing out immune
abnormalities that may contribute to autism. In research on more
than 700
families with an autistic as well as a neurotypical child, Pessah
and his
colleagues have found in the autistic child a signifi¬cant reduction
in
immunoglobulins and an abnormal profile of cyto¬kines, which are
critical to
immune response. "The immune system is involved in important aspects
of
neurodevelopment, " says Pes¬sah. "We've found the presence of immune
antibodies that we think may influence brain proteins. In the next
five
years, as the study continues, we hope to reach about 1,600 families
total.
We need that many to get real statistical power. We hope to find
out what
type of skewed immune response the typical autistic child has and to
isolate
toxic exposures, such as proximity to highways or toxic waste dumps."
Herbert argues that "we can address the disturbed pathways
now, before
me gene hunters have definitive information. Genes, af¬ter all, don't
specify behaviors. They make regulatory factors that in¬teract in
highly
complex ways. And as far as the impact of chemicals on
neurodevelopment,
only about 20 to 30 of the 85,000 chemicals made have been studied.
We can,
at the very least, try to modulate autism by treating the tissue
inflammation. "
In other words, treat now, before the gavel of science strikes
a final
judgment, which might be decades away. That's what Erin and her
husband,
Michael, did for Brendan and Kyle: They blended mainstream
treatments like
speech and occupational therapy with the best biomedical approaches
available. I was told to take my boys home and love them," recalls
Erin.
"The neurologist said don't ¬waste your time on alternative
treatments,
nothing about them is proven. My boys could have ended up
institutionalized,
or my hus¬band and I would have had to take care of them their whole
adult
lives. When your child gets a diagnosis of autism, you lose the
child you
were dreaming about, the one who will go to college, get mar¬ried,
become a
parent. That just wasn't an option."
The boys first saw an alternative Colorado practitioner who
had been
trained by group called Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!). DAN! was co-
founded in
1995 by the psychologist Bernard Rimland, whose own son was
autistic. DAN!
treatments focus on intestinal is¬sues, detoxification, nutrition,
and
neuroinflammation. Recommen¬dations include dietary restriction,
usually
eliminating gluten (present in wheat and other grains) and dairy.
"For weeks after Kyle stopped drinking milk, he had welts
allover his
body," Erin recalls, "as if he were going through a detoxification
reaction.
At the same time, he had his first formed, regular bowel movement.
His sleep
improved."
Other DAN!-recommended treatments include detoxification to
remove
heavy metals and other suspected pollutants, nutritional
supplementation,
and sometimes off-label use of anti-inflammatories , antivirals, and
allergy
medications. These so-called biomedical treatments range from
relatively
inexpensive dietary changes cost¬ing a few hundred dollars a month
to doses
of antifungal drugs that can cost several hundreds of dollars. Many
DAN!
supplements play critical roles in the pathways studied by
scientists like
Jill James. DAN! practitioners are, of course, leaping into the deep
end of
the pool before science has truly proved these treatments effective,
but
there are many anecdotal cases of improvement. [NOTE: See PUBLIC
SERVICE
ANNOUNCEMENT regarding the upcoming DAN! Conference following this
article.
- editor].

Not surprisingly, there has been criticism of the biomedical
ap¬proach, especially when doctors promise too much or parents hope
too
desperately for recovery. As James notes, one mother killed herself
after
seeking every possible treatment for her autistic daughter to no
avail,
causing a furor among parents with autistic children.
Some children just do not get better, no matter what the
inter¬vention. Elizabeth Mumper is CEO of a group called Advocates
for
Children and former director of pediatric education at the Lynchburg
Family
Practice Program affiliated with the University of Virginia. Of the
2,000
children in her practice, about 400 have autism spectrum disorders.
She
describes one boy whom "I have not helped despite my best efforts.
He is 17
and still nonverbal and has horrible, erosive esophagitis in spite
of the
fact that he works very closely with a gastroenterologist. He has to
sleep
standing up and leaning over his dresser because of the pain, and he
has
very id¬iosyncratic reactions to medications. And even though he is
nonverbal, he can type anything to me. He's alpha-smart. The horror
is that
he's trapped in a body that doesn't work."
"I hate the term `full recovery,'" James adds, "because of
this false
hope. Some children do lose the diagnosis, but that's rare. I don't
think
that should be out there as a goal. We need to accept [the kids) and
love
them for who they are-because they are lovable. They're quirky."
Erin's boys benefited from their DAN! doctor, she says, but it
was in
2003, when she switched to a highly unconventional molecu¬lar
biologist and
naturopath based in Maine, Amy Yasko, that she began to see more
striking
changes. Yasko blends the new findings on methylation with a
scientist's
background in the finer steps of fun¬damental detoxification
pathways in the
body. However, she largely favors herbs, dietary change, and
nutritional
supplements over pre¬scription medications. She monitors biomarkers
of
detoxification in the urine as often as every week or two and tweaks
supplements accordingly. Her program is intensive and steeped in
molecular
biology; her twice-yearly conferences are extremely dense,
scien¬tific, and
intended to help parents become at least semiproficient in the
biology and
chemistry themselves. It is a far cry from the old doctor-patient
model –
Yasko works primarily on the internet now -- with phone
consultations, to
interpret test results. She decided to do this when her waiting list
for
individuals stretched to five years, and, she says, she felt she was
not
helping enough children. Erin e-mailed me about 40 charts of
metal "dumps"
for both of her boys-urinalyses Yasko had ordered and charted on a
graph to
show the excretion of everything from arsenic to aluminum, mercury,
and lead
over time. "All these lit¬tle things started clicking after we
started with
her," says Erin.
"I call this approach biomo¬lecular nutrigenomics, after Bruce
Ames, a
professor of biochemistry and molecu¬lar biology at the University of
California at Berkeley," says Yasko. "He said that someday it would
become
routine to screen individuals for polymorphisms and that nutritional
interventions to improve health were likely be a major benefit of the
genomics area." Yasko tests for common polymorphisms in the
methylation
path¬way, even though these findings are still preliminary. This has
made
her controver¬sial among her peers. Yet several doctors and
scientists with
autistic children ad¬mitted privately to using Yasko's services
while being
unwilling to go on the record to support her.
Yasko, who says she moved her hus¬band and three daughters from
Connecti¬cut to a rural area of Maine to "hear the snowflakes fall
on the
snow and get to that quiet place inside where I can think," seems
immune to
the controversy. "I was in a re¬search environment for a long time,
where
you had to publish. Then I was in biotech for a long time, where you
had to
keep ev¬erything quiet. When I began to focus on autistic children,
I made a
decision that in¬stead of publishing in peer review journals, I was
going to
go directly to the moms and help them. I knew in making that
decision I was
going to get flak. That's OK. It was like I was on those cliffs you
see in
the movies, and you're going to jump. You don't know if there's
water below,
or enough momentum to get to the other side, but you just jump."
Today Erin's boys participate in individu¬alized programs at
school
and are being monitored in two national studies of families with
more than
one autistic child-one at the Duke Center for Human Genetics,
an¬other at
the University of Washington. Kyle has, in addition, been tested
three times
at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center's toddler
development
program. Both are still on the autism spectrum-but the incessant
tantrums,
digestive problems, and infections have vanished. Brendan no longer
chews on
his shirt, flaps his arms, and grinds his teeth. In fact, he made
honor roll
in his classes last year. Kelly Swift, the boys' schoolteacher since
the
autumn of 1996, describes them as "sociable and on the whole very
happy,
with a great sense of humor. Kyle is probably the most changed of any
autistic child I've ever worked with."
Kyle, who stopped speaking entirely at age 2, is now a font of
creative language. I know this because Erin and the boys spent a
weekend at
my house. At lunch, Kyle poured a Vesuvius of ketchup onto his plate
and
began transforming his french fries into boats that sailed across the
ketchup before they were disposed of in his mouth; he then began to
entertain us by pretending he was an announcer at a regatta, where
he, of
course, was winning the race. What had once been autism had erupted
into a
gey¬ser of quirky creativity.
The boys' blossoming, according to their mom, is one not easily
measured on tests. "It's the length of their sentences, their
empathy and
sense of humor. Last night we went by a house that was all lit up
for the
holidays and Kyle joked, 'Does that guy want to be seen from space?'
When we
used to take Kyle to the den¬tist, he would scream bloody murder and
we'd
try to papoose him-put him on a board and wrap him in sheets, but
even that
didn't work. so they put him to sleep just to clean his teeth. Last
year we
went to the dentist. and he heard a little boy crying, walked over
to him,
rubbed his back, told him it wouldn't hurt, and not to worry. My
heart was
melting."
Can we cajole a mysteriously shuttered brain and body back
toward
normal? And if so, will autism give us new insight into other
disorders?
Martha Herbert thinks so: "A lot of these metabolic pathways are
pretty
fun¬damental to life. If we can crack the puzzle of autism and be
clear
about how we did it, that may have huge implications for other
chronic
environmentally triggered systemic illnesses. Autism could be a much-
needed
wake-up call to us all".
 

Posted: March 21 2007 at 1:52pm | IP Logged

Here's an alternate view to balance this out:

http://www.interverbal.blogspot.com/

Happy reading.

Posted: March 21 2007 at 6:55pm | IP Logged

A very interesting read Fred!!!  Thank you for sharing.  Although I try to remain optimistic, I almost feel like we won't have the answer's in time enough to help our children.  Maybe I'm just having a bad day!

Again, thank you for sharing this.

Posted: March 21 2007 at 9:23pm | IP Logged

There is a growing sense, Pessah adds, that our heavily
indusrialized, chemical-soaked environment- and the way it acts on
vulnerable genes in some individuals- may be a major culprit. In
December 2006, Harvard researchers boldly announced in The Lan¬cet that
industrial chemicals may be impairing the brain develop¬ment of children around the entire world..

This is why parents of children with disabilities need to take a stand about environmental issues.  Corporations are required to take little if no responsibiltiy for the effects of chemicals and actions on the environment.  Ten out of ten babies is born with mercury and teflon in their bodies plus a myriad of other chemicals.  Unfortunately, we as a society value what we have and don't want to lose any conveniences and cowtow to industry. 

Now ASD is 1 in 150; soon enough it'll be 1 in 2 like cancer; there won't be an uproar then because there isn't one now and 50% of ppl will have cancer in their life.  By then we'll be so clogged with chemicals with only toxic food to eat and corporations will own everything; they'll remind us the world isn't really ours they bought it and we'll be cow penned on a desolute too small piece of unusable property.

Posted: March 22 2007 at 3:06am | IP Logged

Thanks for sharing the article.  My autistic son has lactose intolerance and airborne allergies, and reacts stronger to viruses.  My NT son is much healthier in comparison.  I'm not an alternative medicine kind of girl, though. 

I'm also very suspicious of chemicals.  Can you believe that vinyl flooring in the home is a better predictor of childhood asthma than mom smoking during pregnancy?

Speaking of pregnancy, I participated in the Norwegian data collection that Autism Birth Cohort is part of (many other studies use the same data).  We had to fill out looooong questionnaires, but I felt really good about contributing to scientific/medical progress.

Thanks again for the article.

Posted: March 22 2007 at 4:48am | IP Logged

I thought the Discover article was very good in providing an overview of the reasons for treating ASD children biomedically.  But one thing we have to remember is that they are just glossing over some of the common issues.  Someone had mentioned their child did not have chronic diarreah.  They are children who have gut problems and it is not obvious to the parent and it doesn't have to be diarreah.  Many kids will have loose or soft stools or even constipation or harder stools.  In general, stools are suppose to be the texture of playdoo (sorry for being graphic), unless your child happened to consume a bunch of grapes or other foods that could cause the change in texture.  Before I started the biomed stuff, I thought my child's stools were normal.  But I had not idea what normal was until I researched it.

I just wanted to make the point that there is so much more to the immune and gut issues that the article did not address because it is extremely complicated AND that each child is completely different so the treatment is individualized.  Both of my kids are being treated through the same DAN doctor, yet their treatments are different because they have different issues (even though some of the issues are similar, they vary in terms of severity).

I also wanted to note that the different genes the researchers have been discovering over the past year also deal with issues that doctors of ASD kids are treating.  For instance, the gene discovered in the fall regulated glutamates.  There was a gene discovered in early 2006 or late 2005 that regulated how the body and manufacturered certain cells to heal the gut.  The scary thing is why these genes stop doing what they are suppose to do...which I feel strongly is a result of some environmental exposure.  For years, I use to laugh at all the granola crunchers...now I gradually see myself converting.  Freaky, I know.