PLT Test Blog

When time is of the essence All kinds of dysfunctions may appear in autistic brains, which in itself make it a highly complex condition. There is also the when and where aspects of these dysfunctions, which often gets overlooked, or lost in oversimplification. This then has to fit into the concept of critical periods, that I introduced in an earlier post.  Critical Periods in the Biology of Autism – Not to miss the Boat Critical periods are times during the brain’s development when it is particularly vulnerable to any disturbance, for example an excitatory/inhibitory imbalance. This then leads to another related concept which is that of sensitive periods; these are periods when the person should be responsive to particular therapy. Sensitive periods are very important to be understood by those planning clinical trials, because a therapy may indeed be effective only when given within a specific time window. During this time the person is sensitive to the therapy, but they will not ...

Do you tell it as it really is? Or sugar-coat it, to make it more appealing? It looks like in the English-speaking world we are more and more being driven by emotional political correctness, rather than calling things out as they actually are. Now this does not really matter if you are talking about relatively trivial subjects, which is what we deal with most of the time, but is a problem when dealing with a serious subject. When it comes to autism, giving the cold truth is quite upsetting to many people. Bryna Siegel, a Californian Psychologist working with autism for a few decades has been promoting her new book, The Politics of Autism, in various articles.                             https://thepoliticsofautism.com/ She tells a lot of home truths that many parents and professionals do not want to hear and people often react very emotionally and quite aggressively. I have found myself on more than one occasion givin...

This is another post that I had waiting for completion; it is not saying do not use pre/probiotics, it is just saying make sure you know what you are doing.   Plenty of people appear to be wasting their money on ineffective bacteria, some people are making themselves sick, but others get a genuine benefit worth paying for. The is no one-size fits all. Some bacteria are good for some people and bad for others. It gets more expensive the further you live from Switzerland, but with the right oral  bacteria you need a very modest amount. One of today’s studies shows that spending money on stool tests for bacteria to fine tune a therapy may be a waste of money, unless you do your homework first.   There is currently a lot written about the role of the gut microbiome on human health. Unfortunately, it tends to get simplified into just good bacteria and bad bacteria.   Advice like “take a good bacteria” is not very useful. The reality is that some people take a store-bought...

Today’s post might seem to have a very complicated tittle, but to regular readers it is really just another take on what we have seen time and time again. Today we see how another steroid imbalance in autism – low levels of allopregnenolone in this case – affects the neurotransmitter GABA and indeed the chloride transporter KCC2. Putting Prozac/Zoloft to a better use? I did report previously on a trial in adults with autism where pregnenolone was used. Brief report: an open-label study of the neurosteroid pregnenolone in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Pregnenolone - an effective OTC anti-inflammatory therapy for autism? Why Low Doses can work differently, or “Biphasic, U-shaped actions at the GABAa receptor” Recall that disturbed hormonal homeostasis is a key feature of autism. What matters is the level of each hormone inside the brain (i.e. centrally), not in your blood. The only way to get a reliable idea of what is going on would be to take a sample of spinal fluid. Today w...