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A potential biomarker to AID, not MAKE, a diagnosis

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The media has just called another biological marker a “diagnostic test”, when in this case, it was always intended to be an aid, not a test itself. It involves using baby hair strands to look a variation in metabolism of certain chemical elements across time. Remarkably, it showed similar results in autistic children in Japan, the US and Sweden. It’s not ready to be used as a diagnostic test, so what is it supposed to do? Listen to an interview with the inventor and researcher, Dr. Manish Arora from The Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai School here.

The full article (open access) can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9740182/

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What the Tooth Fairy knows about autism

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A new study uses baby teeth, which are formed in pregnancy and emerge at about 6 months to a year, to understand the dynamics of metals in people with autism.  Not just the levels, but the cycles of zinc and copper, which goes up and down normally with regular biological processes.  This could be the start to many more studies which use baby teeth to understand prenatal and early neonatal exposures in people with autism.  Also, the largest study published so far on food allergies confirmed a higher than normal presence of food, respiratory and skin allergies in people with autism.  Are allergies part of autism?  Probably not, but there seem to be a subgroup of people with immune issues that warrant specific treatments for those allergies.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29854952

 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2683952

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What treatments are lacking sufficient evidence for autism?

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This week two new publications reported on systematic reviews for nutritional and sensory treatments for ASD.  This means the existing research was sorted, summarized, scrutinized and evaluated.  They found insufficient evidence to show any dietary or nutritional therapy was effective, but sufficient evidence that sensory integration therapy helps people with ASD.  In light of new data on heavy metals found in baby teeth, it’s important to remember that chelation is NOT effective and dangerous.  While “insufficient evidence” does not rule out these interventions forever and always, lots more needs to be done in these areas to conduct rigorous experiments that don’t have any major shortcomings so they hold up to scrutiny.