PLT Test Blog

In today’s post we look at maternal stress induced autism and how to prevent it using a bacteria from cows.   It may sound crazy, but it seems to work. The first described strain of  M. vaccae  was isolated from cow dung In the next post we will look at p-cresol autism and reversing it by a microbiota transplant. P-cresol is a chemical derived from phenol that is produced by the bacteria living in your gut. P-cresol is elevated in some young children with autism and it may explain some of those who appear to grow out of their autism.  As the level of P-cresol falls from about 7 years of age, autism symptoms fade away. In both posts the conclusion is similar.   You are dependent on the bacteria in your environment and what the bacteria in your gut makes of you. I did write a long time ago in this blog about the Holobiont, which is a neat idea that I think does partially explain the rise of autoimmune diseases and what is nowadays called the “autism epidemic”. T...

By far the most read post in this blog is one about histamine and allergies, which means many people are searching on Google for “histamine, allergy and autism”. Our reader Kei recently commented that his daughter, without allergy, was again showing signs of summertime raging and that his neurologist confirmed that summertime raging does indeed happen and nobody knows why. I did figure out how to deal with our version of “summertime raging” and the post-bumetanide “dumber in the summer” phenomena.   There were several posts on this subject.   The lasting solution was to treat the raging as if it was caused by inflammation driven by pollen allergy and to note that inflammation will further worsen the KCC2/NKCC1 imbalance in Bumetanide-responsive autism, making those people appear “dumber in the summer”.   This also accounts for the “Bumetanide has stopped working” phenomenon, reported by some parents.   You need to minimize inflammation from allergy and increase Bumet...

Today’s post is about reading books, which is not one of my favourite pastimes, but it does indeed seem to have significant benefits, particularly if you have autism. Monty is now aged 16, but I still recall the amazement his teachers at school expressed when his 1:1 Assistant taught him to read (using ABA and endless enthusiasm). Teaching someone who could hardly speak, to read, is no small achievement.   We have also done endless exercises at home to learn to read, to write, to do maths and of course to speak. The issue later at junior school was to what extent Monty understood what he read.   There can be a lot of wishful thinking on the part of the parent. Fast forward to 2020 and Monty spends about an hour a day reading a “grown-up” novel.   This was a plan I instigated and again the question arose, how much does Monty understand and frankly, is there any point in the exercise. I have no doubt that a decade ago when Monty was reading aloud, it was like a mechanical p...

  Repurposing what already exists – cheap, safe, effective and sometimes colourful Today’s post is nice and simple. Yet another sub-type of autism is shown in a clinical trial to respond to the cheap drug bumetanide, this time it is children diagnosed with TSC ( tuberous sclerosis complex); TSC is a leading genetic cause of autism often used in research. In France researchers repurposed Folinoral, a lower dose equivalent of Dr Frye’s, and our reader Roger’s, Leucovorin to treat autism with a positive result.  Folinoral is Calcium Folinate, but the dose was just 5mg twice a day, much less than the dose used in the US research. The potential off-label uses for Verapamil, the old calcium channel blocker helpful in some autism, continue to grow. Original purpose:   Lower blood pressure by blocking L-type calcium channels Alternative uses: ·         Treating bipolar disorder ·         Treating cluster h...