PLT Test Blog

This blog is of course meant to be about autism, but today it is again more about cancer, since I keep coming across interesting potential therapies while researching Wnt/PAK/hedgehog therapies for autism. On their way to visit a pharmacy? It really looks like daily use of Mebendazole should be beneficial in some types of autism and perhaps a little short term bioavailability boost from cimetidine might help get things started. There are anecdotes on the internet of people with autism using it for its anti-parasite properties and showing a behavioral improvement. Wnt signalling is highly complex and yet still only partially understood. One interesting role of Wnt signalling is in controlling the flow of calcium ions within cells. The non-canonical Wnt/calcium pathway helps to regulate calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in order to control intracellular calcium levels. Wnt ultimately causes the release of IP3 which then binds to the receptor IP3R which causes calcium t...

Source: LDL receptor-related proteins 5 and 6 in Wnt/β-catenin signaling: Arrows point the way In earlier posts I have covered various signaling pathways such as Wnt, mTOR and the unusually sounding Hedgehog. You can go into huge detail if you want to understand these pathways, or just take a more superficial view. In most cases, things only start to go wrong if you are hypo/hyper (too little/too much) in these pathways. We saw with mTOR that most people with autism are likely to have too much activity and so might benefit from mTOR inhibition, but a minority will have the opposite status and stand to benefit from more mTOR activity. When it comes to Wnt signaling the research suggests the same situation. Wnt signaling is likely to be aberrant, but both extremes exist. Wnt signaling networks in autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability Given the large volume of genetic data, analyzing each gene on its own is not a feasible approach and will take years to complete, let alone ...

This blog is about translating existing medical research into therapy for autism, but quite often the same research has clear application to other conditions. Very often those conditions include diabetes, a common severe form of asthma (COPD - Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ) and of course cancer. Some readers of this blog are already applying some of these insights to improve their diabetes and indeed COPD. Type 2 diabetes is becoming very common and so more interest is being shown in better managing it. Sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts should benefit people with both Type1 and Type 2 diabetes, as more people are beginning to realize. Cancer is a complex subject with many different molecular variants, but much of the science that needs to be applied is shared with autism. If you could master PAK1, RAS, PTEN, BCL2, P2X7, NRF2 etc you would be well placed to treat variants of both conditions. There is a surprising overlap between the existing drugs being repurposed for some au...

There are many comorbidities associated with autism.   I have long held the view that these comorbidities hold the key to understanding each particular case of autism.   In many cases this may be far more useful than genetic testing, which only seems to help in a minority of cases. “Ringed esophagus” aka “Corrugated esophagus” This then allows you to put people into sub-groups that may well respond to the same therapy.   This may all sound like common sense, but apparently is not. Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a relatively new diagnosis and it is applies to a certain type of reflux/GERD/GORD that might be associated with a difficulty in swallowing and may not respond well to the standard stomach acid lowering therapies. It is likely that most people with Eosinophilic esophagitis have never been correctly diagnosed. Many people have taken several years to get the correct diagnosis. It is known that Eosinophilic esophagitis is much more common in autism than the genera...