PLT Test Blog

The new Chinese and old Colonial, side by side in central Shanghai     I do not speak Chinese, but fortunately Google does. I was sent some interesting links to some articles from China about Suramin, the potential autism therapy which many autism parents are eagerly awaiting.   Prepare for a long wait, but hopefully less long in China. My original post on Suramin for autism can be found  in the link below:- Suramin, the Purinome and Autism     I have never had a banner appear on my computer trying to sell me a Rolls Royce until today.   This is more proof, if I needed it, of how much China has changed since my first visit there as a teenager.   Back then there were a lot of bicycles; I still remember many were Flying Pigeon brand – not a name you forget. I just looked them up and since 1950, more than 500 million Flying Pigeon bicycles have been made - that is a lot bicycles. I even went to see a factory still producing steam locomotives ...

Regular readers of this and similar blogs will have noticed that the human body functions in quite irrational ways.  We know why this is; we are the product of a very slow evolutionary process, rather than being a clean-sheet design like your smart phone or iPad. As a result, nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems and at times the cleverer you are, the less likely you are to find a medical therapy effective in humans. Such is the case with autism, inflammation and microglia. It might seem that you can track back inflammation in autism to its “root cause”, which could appear to be those immune cells in the brain, called microglia.  We know they are “activated” in autism and we know that autism is typified by an “over-activated” immune response. Working with the assumption that autism is a brain dysfunction, you would assume that the effective therapy should be inside the so-called blood brain barrier (BBB). You would then just look for a potent drug that could “stabilize” ...