PLT Test Blog

This is another post prompted by a comment received on this blog. My 15 year-old daughter has classic regressive type ASD. I started her on an anti-inflammatory, Anatabloc, over a year ago and it allowed me to take her off atypical anti-psychotics ( she was on them for aggression) Do you know anyone else using this dietary supplement?   I found this very interesting and so I did some quick research. Anatabloc was until very recently sold in the US as a supplement, it was withdrawn from sale by the producer following a corruption trial and a dispute with the FDA over approvals.  Nobody is saying the supplement does not work, rather it is a drug. Anatabloc, supplement at center of McDonnell trial, to be taken off the market Anatabloc Anatabloc was sold as an anti-inflammatory supplement based on a substance called Anatabine, found in tobacco and in lower concentrations in green tomatoes, green potatoes, ripe red peppers, tomatillos , and sundried tomatoes. Anatabine has been st...

Today’s post is rather off subject, since it is not about GABA or complex pathways mainly researched for cancer.  It is about struggling to put on your shrunken socks, that shirt that was left inside out, or finishing your Lego by yourself. Adaptive Behavior / Coping Skills Most people never need to think about adaptive behavior; it just comes naturally.  When adaptive behavior is very weak, then daily life becomes a challenge. Adaptive behavior is a type of behavior that is used to adjust to another type of behavior or situation.  Adaptive behavior reflects an individual’s social and practical competence of daily skills to meet the demands of everyday living. Adaptive behavior is often measured by psychologists using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale  . This post looks as adaptive behavior and some ways to improve it. What prompted this post was a recent post on the excellent Simons Foundation blog:- In fragile X syndrome,coping skills decline with age Fragile X...

I was interested to receive a comment from a reader of this blog who finds that the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin has a major impact on her child’s  autism, debilitating tics and OCD ( Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ). Regular readers may recall that when looking at so-called PAK1 inhibitors, which look like the Holy Grail for both common cancers and autism, it turned out that two already exist.  One is an old anti-parasitic drug called Ivermectin and the other is a substance found in certain types of bee propolis from Brazil and New Zealand. It then turned out that a handful of “alternative” practitioners in the US are already using Ivermectin for autism, but for entirely different reasons.  They believe that various parasites exist inside the children and cause/exacerbate autism. I thought this was intriguing and quite likely another case of “the right therapy, for the wrong reason”. Tics and Ticks Tics are those sudden, repetitive involuntary actions that can vary from...

This is a very brief post to direct those of you interested in the role of GABA, the neurotransmitter, towards a very recent open access review paper by Ben Ari. In particular, people considering Oxytocin or Bumetanide to treat autism may find it interesting. The GABA excitatory /inhibitory developmental sequence: a personal journey

    In Autism the more complicated research and emerging diagnostic tools seem mainly to relate to things like genes and CNVs ( Copy Number Variants ).  To understand this in detail, a PhD in genetics might be helpful; but once you realize that nobody fully understands this emerging area of science, we may still be able to draw some usable insights, that have not been noticed by the autism research community. The focus of research is on cancer; autism remains in a backwater.  However, what research there is on autism and genetics does seem to show rather more overlap with the mechanisms and pathways seen as being behind cancer than you might have expected.  This, combined with the very odd sounding finding by that Nobel Laureate at MIT, that neither cancer nor autism can develop without the presence of a substance called PAK1, makes me interested to look at the cancer research. Then you notice after only a few minutes of research, that there are numerous instanc...