PLT Test Blog

The Milaneses and their shops                                               Another school year has begun, which is always a good time for Monty, with ASD now aged 15. He loves his small international school; he has been there since was 3 years old. School is fun because he gets lots of attention and stimulation. Other children are surprisingly nice to him and the teachers get to meet someone with autism. In kindergarten and the early years of primary/junior school boys with autism often get taken care of by some of the nicer girls. It is like having a live human doll to mother. It is amazing how this pattern repeats among different children with autism. This gradually seems to fade away as girls discover that they need to be cool and kids with special needs tend not to be cool. We had a visit over the summer from a Dutch girl who was one of these nice little girls when she...

Child displaying elongated eyelids typical of Kabuki syndrome Source: Given by Parents of children pictured with purpose of representing children with kabuki on Wikipedia.   The syndrome is named after its resemblance to Japanese Kabuki makeup. As we have discovered in this blog, autism is just a condition where certain genes are over-expressed and other genes are under-expressed. Put like that makes it sound quite simple. Methylation of histones can either increase or decrease transcription of genes. The subject is highly complex, but we can keep things simple. The child in the photo above has Kabuki syndrome and is likely to exhibit features of autism.  In most cases this is the result of a lack of expression of the KMT2D/ MLL2 gene which encodes a protein called Histone-lysine N-methyltransferase .   Unfortunately, this is quite an important protein, because it promotes the “opening of chromatin”.   It adds a “trimethylation mark to H3K4”, just think of it as a pi...

Rather like negotiating with North Korea, today’s post does rather meander. It does in the end up with some interesting options for some people.   Korea - the centre of Ginseng research This post was prompted by research highlighted by our reader Ling, which suggested that bumetanide responders (i.e. people with high intracellular chloride) might benefit from a GABA B ant agonist.  There has been quite a lot of coverage in this blog about agonists of GABA B receptors, like Baclofen and Arbaclofen. Some people with an autism diagnosis do indeed seem to benefit, ranging from some with Fragile-X to others with Asperger’s. Russian-developed GABA B agonists like Phenibut and Pantogam are widely used by adults self-treating their behavioural/emotional disturbances. Some Aspies have commented in this blog that far from helping, Baclofen made them feel worse; perhaps the opposite therapy might help? (the Goldilocks scenario, from the previous post)  The paper below shows how a G...