PLT Test Blog

    Salem College   Today’s post is the first of two new ones about preventing/minimizing future autism.   The second post will be about Dr Ramaekers’ idea of using Calcium Folinate, which he has already put into use in human parents seeking to avoid autism in their next child.  Before we start, I should point out that while readers of this blog, and it seems Dr Ramaekers, likely wish that autism and its symptoms did not exist, there are some people, well paid to research autism, who think autism is a good thing. I really do wonder why such people receive any public funding and wonder what kind of University would employ such people. It is like researching deafness, but not wanting to treat it - better they stay home. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200824091958.htm Simon Baron-Cohen, PhD, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, who co-led the study, added, "Some people may be worried that basic research into differences in the auti...

Today we consider another risk factor that may be contributing to the increase in prevalence of autism and it is about the father, for a change.   In the public's perception cannabis is a safe alternative way to treat all kinds of medical problems, many experts do not agree. Cannabis may Epigenetically Mark Men’s Sperm for Autism Fathers who use marijuana may be using it for two, suggests a study from Duke Medical Center. Although the study is small, encompassing just 24 men and 15 rats, it highlights a potential transgenerational effect of marijuana exposure—the passing on of sperm in which an autism-associated gene, DLGAP2, has accumulated extra epigenetic marks. The Duke scientists, led by Susan Murphy, PhD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, identified significant hypomethylation at DLGAP2 in the sperm of men who used marijuana compared to controls. A similar observation was made in the sperm of rats exposed to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compared to controls...

The original idea of this blog was to try to keep complicated things as simple as possible, so at times things may get over-simplified.   This post starts out simple and then gets rather involved in oxidative stress. When people think about genes, they are nearly always thinking about the “blueprints” that are encoded on your DNA.  As it turns out only about 5% of your DNA is dedicated to this function; this 5% is contained in the exome . Much autism research is dedicated to finding faulty “blueprints” that might account for autism.   There are now several hundred so called “autism genes”, where an error in the “blueprints”, means that the associated protein is not produced to its intended specification. We also have seen that genetic defects just lead to a possibility of something going wrong.  A “faulty gene” creates the possibility of a specific dysfunction happening, it does not mean 100% that it will happen.  Partial dysfunctions and partial deficiency...