PLT Test Blog

Magical Poland Today’s post is about yet another reason why some people with autism might have a positive behavioral response while on antibiotics. Today it is the turn of macrolide-type antibiotics, which have proven immunomodulatory effects. To get the immunomodulatory benefits, without worsening antibiotic resistance, a neat solution called CSY0073 is coming. Nystatin is another possibility. One of the best papers happens to come from a pair of researchers from Lodz ( Łódź, pronounced “Wudge”) in Poland. This blog has many Polish readers .   I was recently helping my son, Monty aged 14 with ASD, with his geography presentation on Poland.   I used to travel quite a lot to Poland and I am familiar with its turbulent history. So today’s picture above is actually from Monty’s PowerPoint presentation on Poland. As musical backing, we added one of Chopin’s Polonaises, since Monty is the piano man and Chopin was born in Poland. Polonaise (Polonez) is the name of a type of Polish...

People keep telling me that my blog is too complicated; compared to the literature it really is not. If your child has a disabling condition you really should be willing to invest all the time needed to learn about it, rather than be a passive bystander. I think you can investigate even complex sounding genetic disorders without being an expert, which is what happens in today’s post.   Are there 20,000 types of jeans? As readers may recall, humans only have about 20,000 genes, far less than originally was thought. Each gene provides the instructions to make one thing, usually a protein. For the great majority of genes we have two copies, one from Mum and one from Dad. Mitochondrial genes all come from Mum. These genes are stored on chromosomes (like recipe books). For 22 of these recipe books you have two copies, so if one page got damaged at least you have an undamaged version from the other book. The 23rd pair of books is special because while females have two copies, males do ...

Karimnagar, India, where Schizophrenic Rats respond well to Beetroot Juice If you are not old enough to be interested in dementia, skip through those parts of this post and read about schizophrenic mice and beetroot juice. There have been earlier posts regarding using nitric oxide (NO) to improve circulation and derive a cognitive benefit. Many sportsmen have followed up on the research studies that show exercise endurance is improved after taking beet root juice. Since it is not a banned substance they are free to benefit from it. We know that beet root does not only reduces blood pressure but it actually can increases perfusion, or blood flow, to the brain. Reduced blood flow to the brain is a feature of some dementia. Studies have used MRI to show that circulation is increased. A follow up study has recently been published which shows that beet root juice combined with exercise produced MRI results that resemble those of much younger adults. In a previous post we saw that cocoa flav...