PLT Test Blog

The reason I have a short list of talented researchers as my Dean’s List for this blog, is because of the generally low standard of much you can read about autism, even sometimes from governmental bodies like the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in the in the US and NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) in the UK. I suppose these days it’s just called Fake News My contribution is to highlight the researchers I think are worth paying attention to. When it comes to the prevalence of autism, Éric Fombonne is a researcher who has more than his share of common sense.   Fombonne is a French psychiatrist and epidemiologist who also worked in the UK and Canada before moving to the US. He recently gave the interview below, which highlights glaring errors/weaknesses in reports which are picked up by the mass media and put forward as facts.  Inconsistent prevalence estimates highlight studies’ flaws “… the CDC does not attempt to assess everybody in ...

Typical children usually enjoy their long summer break and once they are teenagers they do not need much supervision; that is not the case with people with more severe autism. Most kids with this kind of autism are counting the days till they can go back to school.     In the US, many such people have an extended school year, which keeps them occupied, but this does not exist in most of the world.   The US actually has a very short standard school year, just 180 days; in Japan they are in school for 220 days a year. This year Monty, now age 15 with ASD, has been much more energetic since he started taking a little scoop of Agmatine before breakfast, 11 months ago. He now completes a lot of physical activities, by anyone’s standards. He enjoyed running at school last year and was good at it, so I started taking him to a running track in the holidays. It is 1.2km (0.75 miles) long and runs through a forest, so it is mostly out of the sun. The first step was to decide not to...

  Repurposing a German psoriasis treatment for the second time? First for Multiple Sclerosis and second for some Autism? Today’s post is about one anti-inflammatory aspect of ketones; part 4 in this series will look at Ketones and their effect on the NLRP3 inflammasome, which also relates to inflammation; but it would be too much for one post. If you have elevated levels of the inflammatory cytokine IL-1β, common in much autism and Alzheimer’s, part 4 of this series will be very relevant. Today we just look at HCA2, which should be interesting for people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), psoriasis and anyone with autism who responds to HCA2 activation. In Germany a tailor-made solution already exists for a potential clinical trial to evaluate the effect of HCA2 activation; and even with low dose tablets. Activating HCA2 should have profound neuroprotective effects; the ways to activate it include: - ·         BHB ( β-hydroxybutyrate ) from the ketogen...

Turmeric powder, only in food, modified the SLC6A15 gene I know that most readers of this blog want to treat autism with supplements and/or diet. Many supplements and herbal medicines do show promise in the laboratory, when tests are conducted in vitro, but very often when tests are made in humans the results are much weaker, or just not present.   Turmeric/Curcumin is a perfect example; in the test tube it has a wide range of potent benefits, but due to low absorption into humans (bioavailability) it does not show such conclusive results in human studies. One researcher a while back did send me a study that reviewed all the turmeric/curcumin trials and it concluded that curcumin has no beneficial effect in humans. In modern medicine anecdotal evidence does not count. Some anecdotes are genuine, but some are coincidence and some are placebo.   Mini trial of Turmeric at three UK Universities There is a remarkably good medical program produced by the BBC in the UK, called Trust ...