PLT Test Blog

    I am actually in the middle of writing up my ideas about autism and the various human growth factors, but I just came across a paper worthy of its own post.  It is by one of those researchers already on my Dean's List, Dr Theoharis Theoharides from Tuft's University. Is a Subtype of Autism an Allergy of the Brain? You may recall that Theoharides works in the very small world of the mast cell.  These cells play a key role in allergies.  They contain histamine, serotonin and various other inflammatory agents. The allergy causes the mast cells to "degranulate" and all the contents is released into the blood supply.  This then starts a chain reaction of events all over the body. I was just reading about Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) which appears to behave strangely in autism.  It turns out that mast cells synthesise, store and release NGF. NGF is very important for the brain, but it can also be highly neuro-inflammatory.  In autism NGF leve...

The clinical trial of Bumetanide in autism, published in 2012, was what triggered my interest in using drugs to treat autism. A randomised controlled trial of bumetanide in the treatment of autism in children In that trial on children aged 3-11 years, the dosage used was 1mg a day, split in two doses. In my trial, I found 1mg in the morning effective, while splitting the dose rendered it ineffective.   I was surprised to hear that the French researchers find the treatment effective in 90% of cases of autism, including Asperger’s.   The reason is that while Monty, now aged 10 with ASD, is a responder, it seems that most people I know who have tried it have not responded.   O nly one did respond, and that was when the father upped the dosage. Now I hear that Lemmonier’s standard dosage has doubled to 2mg a day, with 1mg in the morning and 1mg at 5pm.  He tries for three months, before assuming the drug to be ineffective. So to anyone who tried Bumetanide without succes...

     Matryoshka dolls are Russian stacking dolls, often mistakenly called Babushka dolls Picture Source: Wikipedia This post coincides with the first week of Putin’s Winter Olympics in Sochi.   All is going well so far and Russia has shown it can put on quite a spectacle.   Russia has no shortage of clever scientists, but rarely does their research make it into English language journals.   No doubt, much gets lost to the non-Russian speaking world. Russia is famous for its Matryoshka dolls.   Remove the outer layer and see what is underneath. Treating your child’s autism can also be like un-stacking your Matryoshka doll  for the first time.   You may be surprised what lies underneath.    моя матрешка ( My Matryoshka) This week for me was another surprising one. Monty, aged 10 with ASD, has an Assistant with him in the mornings at school.   “Has Monty ever been to Disneyland?” she asked me.   It turns out one of his cla...

I t seems that autism is not the only “untreatable disease”, that does appear to be treatable.   At least twenty years ago, one apparently related condition was extensively treated off-label.   I am reading an intriguing book about the off-label treatment of Fibromyalgia in the 80s and 90s.   Off-label In medical-speak “off-label” is when a drug is use for a purpose it was never actually approved for.   If you have straight forward diseases, you would never need to use a drug “off label”. In some countries off-label prescribing by doctors is totally discouraged, in others, it is quite common. The problem occurs when it comes to paying for expensive drugs and, of course, who is to blame if things go wrong. Since many drug discoveries are actually stumbled upon by chance, off-label drug use is not as crazy as it may sound. Socialized Healthcare, Private Insurance and Lawsuits In the developed world, healthcare is provided either via some kind of private insurance as ...

Ten months ago I decided to invent my own, admittedly subjective, autism scale to map the progress of Monty, aged 10 with ASD; a lot has changed since then, so I decided to update it. For background to the scale, read the earlier post. Conceptual Map of Behavioural Homeostasis in Autism       The chart above is an update of the original; I added the bright yellow line to reflect events since April 2013 and a future prediction.   I decided that predicting more than three years is pointless. The orange line shows that autism was very present from birth, with a second wave hitting causing more symptoms and then a nice shallow decline.   Aged 8 and half, emotional stress causes a huge regression and he enters into the world of SIB and aggression.   The situation is gradually recovered using exclusively an ABA approach.   The new homeostasis is at a higher plateau.   I expect some epigenetic change occurred. At 17 December ...

  Organs of the Immune System   Today’s post will combine some first class science from MGH ( Massachusetts General Hospital) with some feedback that I have been receiving. I have been receiving comments from parents who have tried some of the various new scientifically-based drug therapies for autism.   For some parents, none of them work.   This is not a surprise, since we have established that “autism” is just a general term for a collection of behavioral symptoms.   These symptoms can be caused by a remarkable variety of different factors and so a therapy can only be successful, if it is matched to the appropriate subject.   The lack of biomarkers currently makes it a case of trial and error. What really draws my attention is when a successful therapy appears to “stop working”.   This has already happened to my son and it just happened to a reader of this blog; “NAC has stopped working”. So I applied myself to figuring this out.   In fact, it ...

  I introduced Fibromyalgia in my last post ; it is an neurological condition that can cause some very strange symptoms, in addition to pain and fatigue.   I imagine that there are various different underlying causes and so, like autism, it is really a family of disorders with overlapping symptoms. Surprisingly, at least one type of Fibromyalgia would appear to have similar causes to classic autism, but its onset is after the brain has fully developed.   As with autism, the approved medical treatments are all for the symptoms, rather than the underlying condition.   The underlying condition seems to be a neuro-endocrine inflammatory disorder, sometimes with channelopathies. One very interesting finding is that exercise consistently helps with the symptoms of Fibromyalgia.   I was reading a paper just last week that showed that exercise (jogging) reduced autistic behaviors.   It has already been well established that exercise is almost as effective as drugs ...