PLT Test Blog

There have been yet more autism studies recently, highlighting neuroinflammation and the role of cells called microglia .  The result is this rather long post; but there is film to watch, if it gets heavy going. Glia derives from a Greek word for glue. The original thought was that the glial cells “glued” the neurons together. It turned out that glial cells do very much more and might be better thought of as “resident immune cells”.  They have other functions including synaptic pruning, which appears to have gone awry in autism.  They also form myelin, and when this goes wrong, big problems follow. Microglia are inside the blood brain barrier and one of their jobs is to swallow up any foreign bodies that should not be there, before they can do damage.  It appears that this process is mainly modulated via potassium channels.  The majority of research focuses on the calcium-activated K + channels, particularly KCNN4/KCa2 and 3.1, and ATP-sensitive K + channels (...

Anyone with a serious interest in autism should also be aware of PANDAS ( P ediatric A utoimmune N europsychiatric D isorders A ssociated with S treptococcal Infections) and PANS ( P ediatric A cute-onset N europsychiatric S yndrome) .  These are two syndromes which have acute onset of symptoms very similar to some of those found in autism.  It is claimed to affect 1 in every 200 children in the US. The good news is that a very thorough and dedicated doctor called Susan Swedo has worked logically through from starting to identify the syndrome, all the way through to treating it.  Good job Susan. Though she insists that PANDAS and PANS are distinct from autism, one can only wonder how many other distinct, but yet to be identified, syndromes exist that also present with autism-like symptoms. Thanks to the efforts of Dr Swedo and the US NIMH ( National Institute of Mental Health ), these two conditions have been remarkably well investigated, in a very short period of time....