PLT Test Blog

There is much written in the complex scientific literature about the Excitatory/Inhibitory (E/I) imbalance between neurotransmitters in autism.   Many clinical trials have already been carried out, particularly in Fragile-X.   These trials were generally ruled as failures, in spite of a significant minority who responded quite well in some of these trials. As we saw in the recent post on the stage II trial of bumetanide in severe autism, there is so much “background noise” in the results from these trials and it is easy to ignore a small group who are responders.   I think if you have less than 40%, or so, of positive responders they likely will get lost in the data.   You inevitably get a significant minority who appear to respond to the placebo, because people with autism usually have good and bad days and testing is very subjective. There are numerous positive anecdotes from people who participated in these “failed” trials.   If you have a child who only ever...

I did think of highlighting this post to the Bumetanide researchers in France, but I do not think they would take it seriously. Another one to mention would be this new study, funded by Rodakis, to look at why some antibiotics improve some autism.   Dr Luna at Baylor College is running the study.   Its basic assumption is that the effect must be to do with bacteria, but as our reader Agnieszka has highlighted, common penicillin type antibiotics increase expression of the gene GLT-1 which then reduces glutamate in the brain.   It has nothing to do with bacteria.   Maybe for other antibiotics the effect does relate to bacteria. But if you tell Dr Luna about GLT-1, quite likely she will not be interested.    Study to investigate connection between antibiotic use and autism symptoms Researchers will compare the gut microbiome (bacteria, yeasts and fungi found in the gut) and metabolome (small biological molecules produced by the microbes) of those who experienc...