PLT Test Blog

Brasil is the C-section capital of the world, wi th rates in the public sector of 35–45%, and 80–90% in the private sector . A recent study from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, analysing 61 previous studies, has again shown a connection between birth by Cesarian Section and an increased risk of autism or indeed ADHD.  C-sections account for just 16% of births in Sweden, but 32% in North America. This of course prompted a reaction to reassure future mothers that they have nothing to fear, from experts in obstetrics who of course know nothing about the etiology of autism.   Mothers should be reassured, but trashing the study helps nobody.  Instead of a 1% risk of non-trivial autism, it rises to 1.3%. You still have more than a 98% chance of having a neurotypical child, all other factors being equal.  Without a medically necessary C-section, death is a real possibility. It was a couple of years ago that the Karolinska Institute highlighted the fact that those with s...

I have been asked twice about off-label therapies for Parkinson’s, both times I mentioned Bumetanide, but having rechecked the literature, there is now plenty of supporting data, enough that a clinical trial has now been put in motion in France. Parkinson’s disease is all about a lack of dopamine and bumetanide is all about making GABA work as inhibitory. You might wonder why is Peter suggesting people to talk to their doctor about giving their elderly parents a diuretic. Well the lack of dopamine goes on to cause a GABA dysfunction, which is treatable and does improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s. So, Bumetanide will not cure Parkinson’s, but may reduce its severity. In the case of the last person who asked me, her mother already takes a diuretic for other reasons, so all she would have to do is to switch drugs to Bumetanide. The doctor was only too happy, when given the evidence, to switch her to Bumetanide - a rare victory for common sense.  What caught my attention was the dosag...

We were recently at the seaside in Greece, where Monty was enjoying swimming in the sea. He is now a very competent swimmer and behaves in the water just like any other confident swimmer. Together with Mum he actually rescued a Russian swimmer in distress.  Monty does not get crazy ideas to swim to islands in the distance, or anything like that. Not so far, at least.  Water is behind a shocking number of wanderings and deaths. In the North American media, you can see that on a very regular basis children with autism and/or ID/MR (Intellectual Disability/Mental Retardation) wander off and get lost. Very often they are found in or beside water. In Europe you hear much less frequently about children wandering. A high-profile case recently was an Irish teenage girl with MR/ID who disappeared while on holiday at a tiny jungle resort in Malaysia.  She left behind an open ground floor window and was found 10 days later beside a stream in a ravine a mile away.  She had holo...