Missed the Meeting on Language in Autism? Listen to this podcast

Last week in North Carolina, the Meeting on Language in Autism was held, with 3 days of amazing presentations and lots of productive discussions about how language and speech develops and how people with autism communicate. This podcast describes the origins of language development and how intervention during toddlerhood can promote lifelong language abilities. To learn more about the meeting go to www.mola.org and to see the Autism Navigator, go to www.autismnavigator.org.

What’s the latest on minocycline for autism?

This week’s podcast re-explores a question about a potential therapy for autism – minocycline. Minocycline is an antibiotic used to treat a number of different infections and some anecdotal reports have linked it to an improvement of autism. This has led to some experimental trials on minocycline, with inconclusive results. This week, a multisite study showed NO effects of minocycline for autism features or outcomes, but that doesn’t mean it is NOT a great antibotic. If you need it, use it! Also, do autistic people spend too much time on their screens? Well, they seem to spend more time on devices and screens, but it might all be bad. Listen to the podcast for more information on this.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-023-06132-1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10709772/?report=printable

Support for Siblings during COVID

Everyone needed support during the pandemic, but families affected by autismneeded special support. This included siblings. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital tried out an intervention around stress and anxiety reduction in siblings in 2020. Not only was it liked, it worked. It didn’t completely eliminate stress and anxiety, nothing would, but it did help siblings manage a little better. Can it work outside the pandemic? There are certainly other situations where siblings could use a little more support.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36460184/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05500-7

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.2987

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.2987#aur2987-bib-0032

When it comes to intervention, earlier is better

This week, we talk to Whitney Guthrie from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who spent the last 6 years conducting the gold-standard randomized control trial that demonstrates intervention for social communication skills at 18 months shows greater effects than intervention starting at 27 months. If you wanted evidence that earlier is better, here it is! Interventions and supports are important at any age, but the critical window of development between 18-27 months is particularly important for long term development.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36922406/

Can we solve the pandemic problems around diagnosis and intervention?

This week’s #ASFpodcast highlights a few articles from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders this week which examined the tolerability and efficacy of online diagnostic procedures and interventions, from the perspective of both parents and clinicians. They seem to work about the same, although there were some caveats. For many reasons, online and telehealth options are here to stay, and more needs to be done to improve their accuracy, acceptability, feasibility and effectiveness. These early studies are promising though, and lead the way to even more improvements to help make them a viable option for families in the future.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05435-z

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05576-1

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05554-7

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05580-5https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05607-x

The meaningful impact of clinical trials

Clinical trials in autism are so incredibly important to families and adults, but sometimes hard to understand. Why? How can it help me or my family? What do I need to do? What do all of these terms mean? For researchers: it’s hard to get families to participate in my study. What can I do to improve the appeal? Caroline Averius and Zachary Williams explain in this podcast about a newly launched two new guidebooks designed to help explain clinical trials, why they are important and what needs to be shared with the community to ensure transparency.

Want to read them? Links below:

https://tinyurl.com/AutismTrialsGuidebook

https://tinyurl.com/AutismTrialsExplainer

Psychedelics and Symptoms

More and more, psychiatrists are looking to psychedelic medication to help individuals who are resistant to other types of therapies. These include seizures, PTSD and depression. But can they help individuals with autism or ease autism-related problems or improve cognition? Two new studies on cannabis and one on ketamine are summarized in this week’s ASFpodcast. Promising, interesting, but not definitive. It’s a short podcast this week.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36085294/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35617670/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666247722000549?via%3Dihub

Parents! Parents! Parents!

Parents are now used as intervention partners through a design called parent-mediated intervention. It started to be studied before the pandemic but has now become a necessity. Does it work? Should it always work for everything? How long should the intervention last and how often? These are all questions of interest, and while research is still early, parents can be amazing partners in intervention especially below age 5. The provide opportunities for learning and communication, and they can utilize more hours during the day at home than traditional in-clinic services can. Of course not every family is the same and may not have the same abilities to learn the intervention, and in the future more of these contextual factors need to be studied. But for now, three cheers for parents helping their kids!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34867556/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35037520/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35040001/

All about ABA

The practice of ABA, or applied behavioral analysis, can be easily misunderstood. Rather than a single procedure, ABA is a variety of techniques that can be applied to different situations to improve communication, reduce aggression, and improve the quality of life of people on the spectrum. Why is it getting a bad reputation? Is the ABA of today the same as it was in the 1960’s? And what benefits does the techniques and principles of ABA confer to those on the spectrum? Listen to today’s #ASFpodcast which also includes footage from Melanie Pellecchia’s Day of Learning presentation.

Here’s what you won’t hear about that new JAMA study on Twitter

A couple of weeks ago, a group in Australia published a study that investigated the efficacy of a “preemptive” intervention. That is, what happens if you provide support to parents to improve social communication, interaction and skills in infants before a diagnosis can be made? The results have a lot of meaningful implications of what interventions are possible at this age, how they can be delivered, and what it means to NOT receive an autism diagnosis but still show challenges. But the Twitter hive didn’t perceive it that way. This week I explain what the study did and didn’t do, and how it can help people across the spectrum.

Open access here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8453361/