on Autism

The Top 9 Signs Your Infant May Have Autism

http://lighthouseautismcenter.com/top-9-signs-infant-may-autism/

1.) Lack of smiling

Does your child smile back at you when you give her a warm, joyful smile? Does your child smile on her own? By the age of six months, your infant should be giving you big smiles or happy expressions.

2.) Rare Imitation of Social Cues

Does your child imitate the sounds and movements of others? Does he share expressions back and forth? Infrequent imitation of sounds, smiles, laughter, and facial expressions by 9 months of age can be an early indicator of autism.

3.) Delay in Babbling and Cooing

Is your child making “baby talk” and babbling or cooing? Does she do it frequently? Your baby should typically reach this milestone by 12 months.

4.) Unresponsiveness to Name

Is your baby increasingly unresponsive to his or her name from 6 to 12 months of age? Parents who see this in their child are often concerned it may be hearing loss and are unaware it can be a sign of autism. If you see this behavior in your child, be sure to monitor the signs and consult a doctor

5.) Poor Eye Contact

Does your child make limited eye contact with you and other loved ones? Does he follow objects visually? Severe lack of eye contact as the baby grows can be an early indicator, as it is a form of communication and comprehension.

6.) Infrequently Seeking Attention

Does your son initiate cuddling or make noises to get your attention? Does he reach up toward you to be picked up? Disinterest in seeking a loved one’s attention or bonding is a sign your baby may eventually have difficulty relating to others, which can be a struggle for those on the spectrum as they grow up.

7.) Lack of Gesturing

Does your son gesture at objects or people to communicate? Does he wave goodbye, point, or reach for things? This is a milestone that is typically reached by 9 or 10 months old.

8.) Repetitive Behaviors

Does your child engage in repetitive behaviors such as stiffening his arms, hands, or legs?
Does he display unusual body movements like rotating his hands on his wrists? Does he sit or stand in uncommon postures?

9.) Delayed Motor Development

Has your daughter experienced significant delays in motor development milestones, such as rolling over, pushing herself up, and crawling?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2014/09/09/autism-therapy-study-children/15316255/

Study: Autism signs in babies can be erased

(Photo: Jupiterimages/Getty Images)

A new pilot study suggests that signs of autism symptoms can be erased if babies begin therapy even before they can toddle.

Researchers have long taken the "earlier the better" approach to treatment, but this tiny study – in just seven children – is the first to look at starting therapy in the first year of life.

The research, run by the University of California Davis' MIND Institute, provided directed therapy to babies ages 6-9 months old who were identified as having early signs of autism, such as an inability to make eye contact, lack of babbling and fixations.

By the time the seven babies reached their third birthday – a time when autism can reliably be diagnosed – five didn't show any autism symptoms and a sixth had only mild symptoms.

The treatment now needs to tried in many more children to make sure that it can be consistently helpful, said study co-author Sally Rogers, a professor and developmental psychologist at UC Davis.

"It doesn't prove that these children recovered from autism," Rogers said, because they were too young to be diagnosed with the condition. But "it's a promise of a potential treatment for young children who have these symptoms."

It's not clear, Rogers said, whether the early treatment is better than therapy now generally offered for 3- and 4-year-olds. But it may be that focusing on teaching language to babies at a time when they would normally be learning to speak, for example, will prove more effective than catching children up later, she said.

It's way too soon to declare this kind of therapy a "cure" or even a treatment for autism, said Deborah Fein, a child neuropsychologist at the University of Connecticut, who has researched older children whose autism symptoms disappeared.

Some babies who look like they're going to have terrible problems simply outgrow whatever was wrong, she said. But she was impressed with the results and said the therapy deserves further investigation in many more children.

Rogers said she and her colleagues are planning a larger study now, to begin as soon as they can line up funding.

The treatment, which is a modified version of a therapy program already offered to older children diagnosed with autism, involves 12 hour-long training sessions for families, directing parents to pick up on their children's unusually subtle cues.

Not all parents will have the time necessary to partake in the program, said Dr. Lisa Shulman, director of Infant and Toddler Services at Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center. Some may not have the time, or lack the commitment to parenting a challenging child, she said.

Plus, parents whose children don't improve with early therapy, shouldn't blame themselves, she said. "There will be a group of parents who will say even if my child had been identified that early, I don't think that would have made a difference. I say as a professional, 'that's true.'"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-bacteria-may-play-a-role-in-autism/

Gut Bacteria May Play a Role in Autism

Evidence is mounting that intestinal microbes exacerbate or perhaps even cause some of autism's symptoms

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

Bacteroides fragilis 
Credit: CNRI/SCIENCE SOURCE

Autism is primarily a disorder of the brain, but research suggests that as many as nine out of 10 individuals with the condition also suffer from gastrointestinal problems such as inflammatory bowel disease and “leaky gut.” The latter condition occurs when the intestines become excessively permeable and leak their contents into the bloodstream. Scientists have long wondered whether the composition of bacteria in the intestines, known as the gut microbiome, might be abnormal in people with autism and drive some of these symptoms. Now a spate of new studies supports this notion and suggests that restoring proper microbial balance could alleviate some of the disorder's behavioral symptoms.

At the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology held in May in Boston, researchers at Arizona State University reported the results of an experiment in which they measured the levels of various microbial by-products in the feces of children with autism and compared them with those found in healthy children. The levels of 50 of these substances, they found, significantly differed between the two groups. And in a 2013 study published in PLOS ONE, Italian researchers reported that, compared with healthy kids, those with autism had altered levels of several intestinal bacterial species, including fewer Bifidobacterium, a group known to promote good intestinal health.

One open question is whether these microbial differences drive the development of the condition or are instead a consequence of it. A study published in December 2013 in Cell supports the former idea. When researchers at the California Institute of Technology incited autismlike symptoms in mice using an established paradigm that involved infecting their mothers with a viruslike molecule during pregnancy, they found that after birth, the mice had altered gut bacteria compared with healthy mice. By treating the sick rodents with a health-promoting bacterium called Bacteroides fragilis, the researchers were able to attenuate some, but not all, of their behavioral symptoms. The treated mice had less anxious and stereotyped behaviors and became more vocally communicative.

Researchers do not yet know how exactly gut bacteria might influence behavior, but one hypothesis is that a leaky gut may allow substances to pass into the bloodstream that harm the brain. In the mouse study, the probiotic may have helped reshape the microbial ecosystem and made the intestines more robust, preventing the leakage of such substances, says co-author Elaine Y. Hsiao, a microbiologist at Caltech.

So could autism one day be treated with drugs designed to restore a healthy microbial balance? Perhaps, but autism is the result of a “complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors,” explains Manya Angley, an autism researcher at the University of South Australia, so the solution may not be that simple. Caltech biologist Sarkis K. Mazmanian, co-author of the mouse study, agrees. “Many more years of work will be needed before we are confident that gut bacteria impact autism and whether probiotics are a viable treatment,” he says.

Autisms Gut-Brain Connection

http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/autisms-gut-brain-connection/33302

BY MELISSA PANDIKA

Stress can send your stomach into a painful tailspin, causing cramps, spasms and grumbling. But trouble in the gut can also affect the brain. 

This two-way relationship may be an unlikely key to solving one of medicine’s most pressing — and perplexing — mysteries: autism. Nearly 60 years after the disorder was first identified, the number of cases has surged, and the United Nations estimates that up to 70 million people worldwide fall on the autism spectrum. Yet there is no known cause or cure.

The gut bacteria in individuals with autism  aren’t just different… they may actually contribute to the disorder.

But scientists have found promising clues in the gut. Research has revealed striking differences in the trillions of bacteria — a.k.a., the microbiome — in the intestines of children with and without autism. But the gut bacteria in individuals with autism aren’t just different. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have shown for the first time that they may actually contribute to the disorder. They reported in the journal Cell in December 2013 that an experimental probiotic therapy alleviated autism-like behaviors in mice and are already planning a clinical trial.

Today autism is treated primarily through behavioral therapy. But the new study suggests that treatment may one day come in the form of a probiotic — live, beneficial bacteria like those found in yogurt. “If you block the gastrointestinal problem, you can treat the behavioral symptoms,” Paul Patterson, a professor of biology at Caltech who co-authored the study told SFARI.org. University of Colorado Boulder professor Rob Knight hailed the finding as “groundbreaking” in a commentary in Cell. 

Autism is a complex spectrum of disorders that share three classic features — impaired communication, poor social engagement and repetitive behaviors. On one end of the spectrum are people who are socially awkward but, in many cases, incredibly sharp. At the other extreme are individuals with severe mental disabilities and behavioral problems.

Treatment for autism may one day come in the form of a probiotic — live, ’friendly’ bacteria like those found in yogurt.

Among the most common health complaints from children with autism? Gastrointestinal problems. Although estimates vary widely, some studies have concluded that up to 90 percent of children with autism suffer from tummy troubles. According to the CDC, they’re more than 3.5 times more likely to experience chronic diarrhea and constipation than their normally developing peers.

Following these hints, Arizona State University researchers analyzed the gut bacteria in fecal samples obtained from children with and without autism. They found that participants with autism had many fewer types of bacteria, probably making the gut more susceptible to attack from disease-causing pathogens. Other studies have also found striking differences in the types and abundance of gut bacteria in patients with and without autism.

But is the gut microbiome in individuals with autism responsible for the disorder? To find out, Caltech postdoctoral researcher Elaine Hsiao engineered mice based on earlier studies showing that women who get the flu during pregnancy double their risk of giving birth to a child with autism. In the mouse model, pregnant females injected with a viral mimic gave birth to pups with autism-like symptoms, such as anxiety and aloofness. 

The mouse pups went on to develop so-called “leaky gut,” in which molecules produced by the gut bacteria flow into the blood and possibly to the brain — a condition also seen in children with autism. 

But how did these bacteria influence behavior? To find out, Hsiao analyzed the mice’s blood. The blood of “autistic” mice contained a whopping 46 times more 4EPS, a molecule produced by gut bacteria, thought to have come from their intestines. What’s more, injecting healthy mice with 4EPS made them more anxious. A similar molecule has been detected at elevated levels in patients with autism.

Hsiao then laced the animals’ food with B. fragilis, a priobiotic that’s been shown to treat GI problems in mice — and the results were jaw-dropping.

Five weeks later, the researchers saw that the leaky gut in “autistic” mice had sealed up, and the levels of 4EPS in their blood had steeply declined. They looked more like healthy mice – from the inside out. Not only did their gut microbiomes come to more closely resemble those of healthy mice, but they were also less anxious and no longer engaged in repetitive behaviors, like repetitive digging. They were more communicative, too.

Five weeks after treatment with B. fragilis, gut bacteria more closely resembled that of healthy mice — and so did behavior.

But the treated mice remained aloof when a new mouse was placed in their cage. “This is a real limitation in the conclusions from this study as, in many ways, social interaction deficits are at the core … of autism,” Ted Abel, a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania, told SFARI.org. B. fragilis would probably need to be supplemented with other therapies that address social impairments.

Slide of Elaine's Research

What’s more, a probiotic may only help the subset of patients with autism who experience GI problems, Hsiao said. And only a clinical trial will reveal whether the results also apply to humans. 

Still, autism researchers shouldn’t underestimate the importance of gut bacteria, said John Cryan, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at University College Cork. In 2011, his group reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that probiotic-fed mice were less anxious and produced fewer stress hormones.“You have this kilo of microbes in your gut that’s as important as the kilo of nerve cells in your brain,” he said. “We need to do much more studies on autistic biota.” 

For people with autism and their families, however, even a supplemental therapy for a subset of sufferers is a huge step forward. “It’s really impactful, this notion that by changing the bacteria, you could ameliorate what’s often considered an intractable disorder,” Hsiao said. “It’s a really crazy notion and a big advance.” 

* Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article did not adequately credit its source. The story contains some reporting from SFARI.org.