An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism

[Chemisse]

By MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF
IN recent years, scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding the causes of autism, now estimated to afflict 1 in 88 children. But remarkably little of this understanding has percolated into popular awareness, which often remains fixated on vaccines.

So here’s the short of it: At least a subset of autism — perhaps one-third, and very likely more — looks like a type of inflammatory disease. And it begins in the womb.

It starts with what scientists call immune dysregulation. Ideally, your immune system should operate like an enlightened action hero, meting out inflammation precisely, accurately and with deadly force when necessary, but then quickly returning to a Zen-like calm. Doing so requires an optimal balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory muscle.

In autistic individuals, the immune system fails at this balancing act. Inflammatory signals dominate. Anti-inflammatory ones are inadequate. A state of chronic activation prevails. And the more skewed toward inflammation, the more acute the autistic symptoms.


Much more at the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&pagewanted=print

This article really lays out a case for the immune response - and chronic inflammation - as causal for autism and even asthma.

[TrogL]

1. You do realize this is on the opinion page, right?

This article really lays out a case for the immune response - and chronic inflammation - as causal for autism and even asthma.

It does no such thing. It makes a better for case for "correlation is not causation".

Read the damn article.

[Chemisse]

6. Is there a need to be so rude?

I read every word of the article. I thought it was fascinating, particularly as inflammation has been implicated in so many diseases. I also thought it would be fun to talk about the ideas it put forward, since they are pretty different than anything I have ever read.

[TrogL]

9. I've read lots of this crap

Mostly in magazines that promote quack chelation cures and weird diets.

On edit, the doctor involved is paid for by the same people that were paying Wakeman.

If you pay for someone to look for a link, they're going to find it.

[kickysnana]

10. Yeah, imagine posting something to discuss about autism, the nerve of some people.

[HuckleB]

14. Unfortunately, this piece was debunked when it was first published.

Thus, it gets frustrating to see these types of things pushed over and over again:
http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com/2012/08/autism-immunity-inflammation-and-new.html

[RedEarth]

2. Interesting....thanks for posting

[progressoid]

3. blah blah blah.

It's magnets I tells ya. MAGNETS!!

[Warpy]

4. There is a reason this is on the opinion page

rather than in health/science. This is 70% speculation, 30% research.

Understanding something as complex and devastating as autism is going to require a long period of collaborative research. While a haywire immune system might be partially implicated, genes have also been implicated and there are likely other things down the road which will be found to play a part.

What we do know for certain is that the MMR is not to blame, nor is any other vaccine.

[Chemisse]

7. It's hard to begin to understand it if you don't entertain ANY ideas

Here is one study (not related to any opinion page):

Abstract
Recent studies have highlighted a connection between infection during pregnancy and the increased risk of autism in the offspring. Parallel studies of cerebral spinal fluid, blood and postmortem brains reveal an ongoing, hyper-responsive inflammatory-like state in many young as well as adult autism subjects. There are also indications of gastrointestinal problems in at least a subset of autistic children. Work on the maternal infection risk factor using animal models indicates that aspects of brain and peripheral immune dysregulation can begin during fetal development and continue through adulthood. The offspring of infected or immune-activated dams also display cardinal behavioral features of autism, as well as neuropathology consistent with that seen in human autism. These rodent models are proving useful for the study of pathogenesis and gene-environment interactions as well as for the exploration of potential therapeutic strategies.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21482187

[Warpy]

8. It's even harder if you don't read the post you're replying to.

[bodem1955_om]

24. Good post

[GeorgeGist]

5. Junk science.

[Odin2005]

11. Opinion piece = out of someone's ass.

[HuckleB]

13. It doesn't have to be, but in this case it is.

[HuckleB]

12. Yeah, not so much ... "Autism, immunity, inflammation, and the New York Times"

http://www.emilywillinghamphd.com/2012/08/autism-immunity-inflammation-and-new.html

And a later follow up on this:

Autism: Getting the Science Right in Op-Eds
http://www.reportingonhealth.org/2012/09/18/autism-getting-science-right-op-eds

[Chemisse]

16. That is helpful - thanks.

I posted this for discussion; I wondered what others would think of it.

It sure takes the fun out of it when people just pounce in to post criticisms.

[SheilaT]

15. I'm with Trogl on this.

I have two sons. One has Asperger's. I want to scream at the people who try to convince me it was from vaccinations, or some other causation. Let me tell you, that kid was different from the day he was born.

I have two sons. Both sons have alopecia areata, an auto-immune disorder that causes hair loss. I want to scream even louder and longer at the people who assure me the hair loss was from stress. Really? I may not have been the world's best mother, but I don't think I was such a monster as to give my kids such stress that one would lose all of his hair at the age of three, the other at the age of ten. Oh, and don't tell me the alopecia is from some vitamin deficiency or gluten sensitivity or vaccinations. It's auto-immune. The two major hallmarks of all the auto-immune disease are these: One, no one knows for sure what causes them and there is no cure; and two, there are better days and worse days, times when the auto-immune thing is more active or noticeable and times when it is less.

Heck, the reason it took us so very long to figure out that the oldest had Asperger's, was that he was totally bald -- he has the most extreme form of alopecia called alopecia areata universalis meaning he has no eyebrows, eyelashes, body hair, at all -- from the time he was in pre-school. He always looked different. So quirky behavior got subsumed to the fact that he was always treated differently because of his appearance.

It may well be that auto-immune disorders are on the rise for poorly understood reasons. I have my own hypotheses here, but they aren't important.

I am not entirely convinced that autism in its many forms is that much more common. It's just that we don't lock away kids who are different, the way we used to. And if you start asking around, everyone has the odd older relative who just never quite fit in, and who, looking back on it, may very well have been somewhere along the autism spectrum.

[Chemisse]

17. I can't believe they try to blame hair loss on stress!

That is just so cruel to the parents, and at the same time does absolutely nothing to help.

I recall when I was in college, being taught in Psych class that autism was caused by an infant's interactions with a cold, uncaring or unexpressive mother. Thankfully those days are well behind us.

Best of luck to your sons. I hope we all get some answers soon; there certainly is plenty of ongoing research - into autism anyway.

[Celebration]

18. In this case, "stress"

is physiological, and related to various markers. It doesn't mean the mom was under "stress", or that the kid was stressed out. It means the immune system was stressed, for whatever reason.

This theory is simply without blame being implied, anywhere.

The hygiene hypothesis is a lot more mainstream than this thread would suggest.

Hard to believe there is so much animosity towards this idea here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

[SheilaT]

20. No. People who tell me that hair loss is from stress

are NOT talking about the immune system being stressed. They have no clue that alopecia is an auto-immune disorder. They're talking about the everyday stress we all know so well. There's simply a long standing and totally erroneous notion that stress causes hair loss. And yes, there is clearly an implied blame somewhere.

Trust me. I've been dealing this for more than twenty-five years now.

There is a LOT of magical thinking around things like alopecia areata. I've attended many of the yearly conferences of the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, and it can be very frustrating to hear people who are absolutely convinced that some new concoction of vitamins, or a particular diet, or something else will cure the alopecia. One of the very bizarre things about alopecia is that sometimes, for totally unknown reasons, a person's hair will all grow back, even after having been totally bald for years. Things like that tend to fuel the magical thinking.

As for autism, my oldest son, the one with Asperger's, was different from infancy. He simply was not like other babies. I even had the good fortune to be part of a support group of brand-new first-time parents, and even then I didn't realize that my son was not simply his own unique self, like all other humans. He was different in a more profound way. It took us until he was 18 to figure out he had Asperger's, in part because that diagnosis didn't exist until he was already 12 years old. He was also my first child; had he been born second, I would have recognized how different he was much sooner.

I also have come to understand that there's nothing really wrong with someone with Asperger's. They are different, that's all. Many of them are kind and funny and very smart and they are a delight to be around. It's the rest of the world that's out of step with them.

[Celebration]

21. well you know what people say to you

But the context of this article does NOT say that.

Stress is a marker for the immune system in this article. It is not saying that alopecia is caused by everyday stress.

Autism obviously does not have one specific cause, and is a description of symptoms rather than a single "disease." As stated in the article, he does not try to say that the hygiene hypothesis and immune system stress markers are the single cause for autism. Some may be different as babies, but some apparently are not different as babies.

In other words, people with autistic kids all have a different story to tell.

[bemildred]

19. Has anybody tried giving autistic people a few parasites to see what happens? nt

[Chemisse]

22. From the article:

"a trial is under way at the Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine testing a medicalized parasite called Trichuris suis in autistic adults."

Certainly a bizarre and unappealing treatment, but if it actually helped it would be great.

[bemildred]

23. Thanks.

Thought so. It's rare, but they have their uses, and some can be fairly benign. I would not be surprised if it works.