The autism epidemic seems to mirror IBD/MC - your thoughts?

Zizzle · Post by **Zizzle** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:11 am

I imagine many of you have seen the news -- government research finally demonstrating what families across the country already know to be true -- autism diagnosis and prevalence is growing at an alarming pace.

http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsst ... ovdelivery

The rate of autism spectrum disorders continues to rise among American children, with one in 88 now receiving such a diagnosis, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. That's an increase from the one in 110 estimate released by the CDC just two years ago. The newer data, from 2008, also shows that autism is almost five times more common in boys than girls, with one in 54 boys diagnosed with the condition.

I know many autistic kids, and several who could be diagnosed with probable Asperger's, and I wonder about what society will be like for my non-autistic children, when they grow up with so many peers affected by autism. Will these kids get married? Have good jobs? Leave home? Act with moral convictions and a healthy sense of right and wrong? Will they be bullies or outcasts in high school? Will they be capable parents? Can our society and government support their needs into adulthood and beyond when there are so many (and growing)?

I spend lots of time wondering what's causing this epidemic. It seems to mirror the growth of MC, so I think the causes are related. Is it GMO food, pesticides, antibiotic resistance, viral or bacterial infections, mercury and heavy metals all around us, BPA, too many vaccines too soon, aluminum and other adjuvants in vaccines, genetic susceptibility, older parents? All of the above? Or could there be a single smoking gun that we haven't recognized yet -- like one solitary pesticide that's poisoning the genetically susceptible?

Does the damage truly happen before birth? Some imaging studies suggest this. I say it does for some, but not all.

Is it an autoimmune disease, where brain damage happens as a result of immune activation/dysfunction?
Are there autoimmune processes involved, that if triggered in babyhood, result in autism symptoms, but when triggered in adulthood, result in other things like fibromyalgia, IBD, MS, etc?

Does the predisposition to it rest in our gut bacteria make-up more than our genes??

I truly believe when we have answers to MC, we may have answers to autism, and vice versa.

Call me crazy...

jmayk8 · Post by **jmayk8** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:27 am

I read about this this morning. I plan to have children in the near future but all these unknown triggers really scares me!

Post by **tex** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 12:32 pm

Zizzle,

I had the same thought, about the parallel with MC/autoimmune diseases. IMO, it's an autoimmune disease, possibly with strictly neurological manifestations. That implies that my theory about it's origins probably apples to it as well as any other autoimmune disease, (except that, IMO, the etiology occurs during gestation, rather than after birth, so it's the mother's health, and her environmental influences, that determine the outcome.

I stopped short of adding a discussion about it to my book, because the book is already beginning to appear to be a book about autoimmune diseases, rather than about MC.

Tex

Noodler · Post by **Noodler** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 6:18 am

The link between autism, gastrointestinal immunopathology and the MMR vaccine became a bit of a cause celebre and then a witch-hunt of the doctor's who published the paper in the UK. They had seen a number of children with autism who had a lymphocyte predominant lesion in their gut.

Here is a long link to the paper which shows the study of the children and shows they have a very disturbed immune response in their intestines.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=ca ... v693eoT3lw

Post by **tex** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 10:06 am

Ah yes - the notorious Andrew Wakefield, of nodular lymphoid hyperplasia fame.

http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9880

Tex

carolm · Post by **carolm** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 8:51 pm

HI All,
I am the Autism Intervention Team Coordinator for the special education cooperative I work for (I'm a School Psychologist as well). I make an attempt to keep up on the research, but it's now so plentiful it's hard to get to it all. This is a good problem to have. I inservice staff in our school districts as well as neighboring districts. Five years ago when I'd search for brain development research related to autism I'd be lucky to come up with 3 articles. Now I'll get more than I could get through in a day. Two years ago staff were asking for a more advanced inservice so I thought "I'll just summarize the latest research". That was incredibly naive. I stuck to research from well known teaching hospital and universities. One study would say they hypothalamus was enlarged in children with ASD. Then next found the amydala was enlarged, a third showed an enlarged and poorly functioning thymus gland. By now I'm losing hope of being able to give an inservice that is coherent. At a local conference I listened to Temple Grandin talk about the imaging study she participated in where the frontal lobes of persons with ASD were found to have only 1/2 of the neural development of neurotypical folks, yet another part of the ASD brains had double the neural development which explained some of the extraordinary talents you'll see in kids and adults with ASD, as well as the lack of social skills and executive functioning that comes from the frontal lobe.

IMO the most promising study I saw examined the amount of BPA present in breast milk and the effect on skills of offspring. Keeping in mind that we are absorb increasing amounts of BPA every year in our body fat, the researchers measured the amount of BPA present in human breast milk, then injected the rat mothers with a proportionate amount of BPA (proportionate to their size, etc). The result? The baby rats who had been developing typically socially, physically and who were trainable starting losing skills and continued to regress as long as they received the BPA milk from mom.

The increasing numbers of ASD around the world makes me think that we are looking at a catalyst that is in our environment. Listening to the parents I talk to it does seem I'll hear 2 things. Some parents say "we knew from the time he was 4 months old something wasn't right". Then you have the regressive ASD where kids appeared to be developing typically but begin to lose skills at about age 2. Do we have a catalyst then that prompts a DNA mutation, then diet or additives prompt that mutation to take off (much like the baby rats losing skills)? What about the lopsided neural development that seems well documented? And why are we looking at an occurrence of 1 in 88 boys but 1 in 248 girls?? Is the Y chromosome more susceptible to assault? It makes my head spin to think about the depth of this for long.

One thing for sure is that gastrointestinal problems are more prevalent in children with ASD than the general population. So is anxiety and ADHD. The research up to this point has unfortunately not been conclusive that a GF diet relieves symptoms of autism, but I also think it's hard to run that kind of study with integrity. You would need very tight controls. Most families I know that have tried it eventually abandon it because they see little or no changes in their child's functioning. Still there is no denying the prevalence of gastrointestinal issues in children with ASD. I think the research in the area of diet will continue to grow-- I'm starting to hear more and more about the impact of diets on sensory integration issues, ADD/ADHD, and sleep disorders in kids. I think we have a lot to look forward to.

My last word is that it's hard for me to read any work Andrew Wakefield did and take it seriously. Any Dr. who would falsify his data, pay children at his son's birthday party to let him draw their blood, and then start such a widespread panic with his fake data is so lacking in ethics, it makes me wonder if even his early work had any integrity. It seems unlikely that someone would lose their ethics overnight. I think it's more likely his ethics were shaky all along, IMO.

Okay, I intended to make a few comments but it's a hard topic to pare down. Great topic for discussion.

Carol

Lesley · Post by **Lesley** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 10:38 pm

Wow Carol, what a remarkably informative post. Would you mind keeping us posted on your research and conclusions as you work through this? I am fascinated.

jmayk8 · Post by **jmayk8** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 7:06 am

Ditto on Lesley, Thanks Carol
Jenny

Deb · Post by **Deb** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 8:14 am

Thanks, Carol. I'm forwarding this on to my breast-feeding daughter.
It just sickens me how we're slowly being poisoned by our food supply.

I was really struck by the Temple Grandin movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278469/

Lesley · Post by **Lesley** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:50 am

Me too Deb. I knew and have applied the concept she discovered for herself, but really enjoyed learning the origin. In fact, an OT, Jane Ayers, was the person who first developed and described the concept of sensory integration, although she never conducted any scientific studies, so the credit went to the doctors who did do it, although OTs had been using it for 20 years by the time it was acknowledged by the medical community.

I worked at a place that had a snoezelen room installed for the huge number of autistic kids we treated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoezelen

This was developed to deliver sensory stimuli to these children so that they could learn to integrate them for themselves. Many of the kids would ask to be excused from class so they could go spend time in the room and thus avert an attack, much like Temple Grandin did with her pressure box.

It makes total sense that sensory stimuli from the gut acts on the rest of the sensory system. While I have not followed any of the research in this area I am fascinated by what Carol was describing, and would love to follow her down the road.

Noodler · Post by **Noodler** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:52 am

Yes, it is a shame some of Dr Wakefield's practice tainted some of the good work that the Inflammatory Bowel Disease unit at The Royal Free Hospital did. On the linked paper there were lead authors who looked at autism and gastroenterological and immunological disturbances but this gets steamrollered by the subsequent MMR controversy. Some of the doctors caught up in the scandal & who wrote these studies have been completely exonerated but the work got put back years by the furore.

carolm · Post by **carolm** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 6:19 pm

Noodler, you are right. I felt a real sadness for parents and professionals who really wanted to know the answer to the question of 'did immunizations and preservatives play any kind of role in the development of autism'. When Wakefield was caught and his fellow researchers (on that study) wrote to the Lancet disowning the research, it still left us all empty handed, still wanting to know. And Wakefield's actions did unfortunately taint anything his name is on, even though he may not have had much of a role in the actual research. He may have just been supervising the project on the gastrointestinal problems of children with ASD while others did the actual work and data compilation. But I don't know how to find that out. I just hope the other researchers have gone on to continue what they started because we desperately need them to be looking. We need research coming at this from all angles-- immunological, brain development, chromosome studies, diet, sensory development, environmental contaminants-- every possible angle.

Deb, Jenny and Lesley-- thank you for your comments. It is a fascinating topic and one that we all need to be concerned about. I have the same thoughts as Zizzle does--- what will our next generation accomplish? How will they cope? What do we need to do to pave the way?. That's a large part of the population with ASD. We all (and I mean world wide) hold a vested interest in this area.

Seems appropriate to have this discussion since tomorrow is World Autism Awareness Day and April is Autism Awareness Month in the US.

Take care and have a good week.
Carol

Lesley · Post by **Lesley** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 6:35 pm

You too Carol!

Zizzle · Post by **Zizzle** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 10:51 pm

I can't stop thinking about autism. I'm friends with 2 moms of autistic kids, yet I have a hard time asking them what they think caused the autism, since ultimately they may feel responsible...for accepting one too many vaccines, or having hereditary immune problems, or feeding peanuts and gluten before age one, or eating too much junk food themselves, or taking pharmaceuticals in pregnancy, too many antibiotics, etc. One of them has two kids with anaphylactic food allergies, but only the boy has ASD. My husband has a teenage nephew recently dx'd with Aspergers after years of struggle with an ADHD dx. The whole family is on ADHD meds just to cope, and they finally sent the boy to boarding school. I honestly don't know how these families get through each day. Sending the kids to school must be their only break.

I know some will argue that increased recognition and diagnosis is skewing the stats. But for every diagnosed kid I know of, there is another who goes undiagnosed, often with parents in denial, even when teachers suggest an assessment. Several teacher friends have struggled with these situations. After all, this is DC, land of uber-educated overachievers with big dreams for their kids.

Regarding the greater incidence among children of older parents, I wonder if the eggs and sperm are damaged by age, or if mom's body just has more years of toxic burden accumulated?

And regarding vaccines, is there any research on the rates of ASD among unvaccinated or selectively vaccinated kids? Perhaps we could look at the numbers in Portland, Seattle and other low-vaccine regions?

Overall, I'm dismayed by the fact today's American children have very little chance of growing up completely healthy. Allergies, developmental disorders, obesity, diabetes, you name it. We're in trouble as a society. Everyone should be demanding answers.

Polly · Post by **Polly** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 5:44 am

Timely topic!

As a pediatrician I have been alarmed by the rapid rise in the diagnosis of ASD. Thanks for this informed discussion. I too believe that increased screening and awareness alone cannot account for all of the rise, I and strongly suspect an environmental catalyst. Chemicals have concerned me for years - did you know that there are well over 70,000 chemicals on the retail shelves (pesticides, herbicides, etc.) that have never been tested on kids or fetuses? The chemical industry may be the only one more powerful than big pharm.

And, of course, I have become increasingly dubious of our food supply. Maybe even something like sugar (along with high fructose corn syrup) is involved? Have you seen the recent research that is finding that sugar (not fats, as we all know) may be the major cause of heart disease and cancer as well? This was on "60 Minutes" last night. That show has made me determined to eliminate all sugar from my diet, especially when I saw that the researchers themselves had done so based upon their research. And just like we have always suspected here, they have proved that sugar is addictive, that it "lights up" the same area of the brain that cocaine does within seconds of ingesting it. And that increasing amounts of sugar are needed to satisfy the sweet tooth. Whatever the catalyst, it must be ubiquitous to cause such an increase in ASD in such a short time.

Carol, interesting about the Y chromosome. Boys/men at almost any age are more medically fragile than woman. That's why about 108 boys are born to every 100 girls. In the preemie nursery, the girls were more likely to survive with fewer complications than the boys.

Hugs,

Polly