PLT Test Blog

Today’s post should be of interest to those concerned about mitochondrial disease and mTOR. mTOR is a very important signaling cascade that often dysfunctional in autism. Many aspects of autism and its comorbidities can be traced back to mTOR. The going is easier with a PPAR pan-agonist   mTOR integrates the input from upstream pathways, including insulin, growth, and amino acids.    mTOR also senses cellular nutrient, oxygen, and energy levels. The mTOR pathway is a central regulator of metabolism and physiology, with important roles in the function of tissues including liver, muscle, adipose tissue, and the brain.   It is dysregulated in human diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, certain cancers and indeed autism. One important process affected by mTOR is the creation of new mitochondria in your cells.   Each cell has many mitochondria, but in some people there are not enough and/or they may not work properly.    Mitochondrial Disease and Autism I...

Today’s post is not just about autism. Having written 370 posts in this autism blog, I sometimes feel that I am becoming a bit of an expert on diabetes (and COPD), which you might think has nothing to do with autism. I was talking to a friend of mine who has type 2 diabetes; he was telling me about all the other things that are going wrong with him, because he actually has “metabolic syndrome”. What exactly is metabolic syndrome?   It really is not a very good name. Sure you can have a metabolic system, but there are going to be many different ones.   It looks like in the world of medicine there is just one. The common problem is that in late middle age many people get overweight around their waist, they also have increased blood pressure, high blood sugar and abnormal cholesterol, or triglyceride levels. This combination of symptoms is called metabolic syndrome and it increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and much more. (see chart above, even high uric acid/...