PLT Test Blog

Regular readers will know that I believe in the value of investigating the comorbidities of autism.   We have a cleaning lady who comes each week to help keep our house in order.   She also understands the value of comorbidities. She is one of my independent observers, in changes in the behaviour of Monty, aged 10 with ASD.   She has a friend, whose husband was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is not autism, but they are both examples of brain damage. Still in his early 50s, the husband does not recognize his children and cannot leave home.   The expert Professor, treating him privately, was not halting the rapid decline. So the cleaning lady asks me about all my investigations and decides that she might as well tell her friend.   She decided to suggest the antioxidant NAC and the cholinergic stimulant nicotine. Well, after NAC, the husband was able to make it to the WC and do his business.   A small step forward. After a day with the nic...

It is widely known that autism and epilepsy are comorbid with each other. Statistics are not very consistent, but it appears that up to 35% of people with autism will develop epilepsy and something like 30% of people with epilepsy already have autism. My interest in epilepsy is currently just as a comorbidity, since Monty, aged 10 with ASD, has not exhibited any signs of it.   I will refer back to epilepsy in later posts when I attempt to “validate” potential autism interventions.   My logic is that if something has a positive effect across the majority of comorbidities, then I may be on to something.   For example, I found it insightful to read in a small study that nicotine patches reduced the incidence of epileptic attacks by 50%. I recently came across an excellent, highly readable, paper that I think all parents interested in ASD should read.   It is written by an Israeli lady who is also doing some other very thoughtful research into treating autism.   The...

The three autism comorbidities that I have chosen to investigate are asthma, high cholesterol and various types of seizure.   Phase 1 The first phase is the easy one.   I just need to see if my autism drugs are proven to be effective in the each comorbidity.   The results really surprised me. With the exception of bumetanide and asthma, there is a perfect overlap.   Even more surprising, is that another loop diuretic, called furosemide, which is very similar to bumetanide, has been showed to be effective in asthma when given in the inhaled form. In the case of cholesterol, I am looking at elevated levels in cardiology.   The use of bumetanide in people with heart problems associated with high cholesterol is to reduce blood pressure (anti-hypertensive).     You can check use of my autism drugs in each comorbidity using Google, or just look at the links I selected below.   Asthma/COPD NAC improves effectiveness of the conventional corticosteroid the...

You might have been wondering why there has been a pause in my blog posts; rather than post nonsense, I have been exploring some new directions. The current combination of bumetanide + NAC + atorvastatin does continue to be effective, but clearly there can be more. I recently read a paper by a researcher who concluded that he thought autism was so heterogeneous there might well never be a drug therapy for autism.   I certainly see where he is coming from, but I think this tells us two things:-   1.       Do not expect conventional medical research to come up with an autism drug any time soon.   2.       It would be wise to read up on the medical research outside the realm of autism, where perhaps a more can-do approach and better resourcing might be evident. This brings me to comorbidities .   In case you are not familiar with this term, in medicine, comorbidity is the presence of one or more disorders (or disease...