PLT Test Blog

  Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) Tours, France, Gateway to the Loire Valley and Home to iBrain Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/user:Tango7174   We do seem to be going round in circles in this blog.   One doctor reader contacted me recently to tell me about Pentoxifylline for cognitive improvement. I told him that I am not surprised and that in the world of autism Pentoxifylline has been known to be beneficial for half a century.   The abstract below is from a Japanese paper in 1978   On our experience in using pentoxifylline for abnormal behavior and the autistic syndrome Abstract Describes the successful use of pentoxifylline (150–600 mg/day) with 3–15 yr old children with abnormal behavior (e.g., self-mutilation, aggressiveness, and hyperkinesis) and with autism. It is noted that while the drug was effective in reducing symptoms of autism, developmental factors in the disorder should not be ignored.   You might wonder why it has not been...

  I was talking to the organizers of an autism conference in the US and one question that came up was, do I know a clinician who prescribes potassium bromide (KBr). It is a question that illustrates the problem in treating autism. In Germany, Austria and some neighbouring countries KBr is an established treatment for pediatric epilepsy and particularly some specific conditions like Dravet sydrome. Dravet syndrome  is a rare, catastrophic, lifelong form of epilepsy which begins in the first year of life.   It is one of those conditions where parents in the UK are begging to use cannabis. Dravet syndrome may be accompanied by an autism diagnosis.  In the US KBr is currently only used for canine epilepsy. Regular readers of this blog may recall that Dravet syndrome responds to potassium bromide (KBr) and should respond to low dose clonazepam (it works in the mouse model). I proposed KBr as an autism therapy and even found an “autism” case history from 150 years ago. ...

It is not quite that easy! Initials:                        LT Age:                           14 years old Year of Birth:              2003 Sex:                            Male Date:                           24 May 2018 Diagnosis       LT was diagnosed with autism in January 2007, at a multi-disciplinary assessment in London, at the age of 3 years 6 months.   At that time, LT was non-verbal but had some emerging vocalization. No tics, no seizures, no unusual physical features, no self-injury, no sleep disorder, no feeding disorder. Toilet trained. Very limited attention span. No imaginative play. Liked to jump. IQ not t...