4 ms·

You think I covered all the evidence in my forum post? Yes there are many question left, but right now there is evidence in non-human primates and rodents with

You think I covered all the evidence in my forum post? Yes there are many question left, but right now there is evidence in non-human primates and rodents with causal experimental models, and in humans differences in brain morphology and intellectual disability are associated with increased levels of maternal cytokines and chemokines during gestation in humans. Of course, it would be unethical to do random assignment in humans to a condition causing a large cytokine response in mothers. As far as treatment that is a difficult question. Active filtration might be a possibility. In any case, there is more of a possibility here for prevention than gene therapy, imo.

AstralStorm 10y ago
Unless you accept eugenics of course or perhaps in vitro fertilization. Somewhat dirty words nowadays. Or if the problem turns out to be metabolic and thus possible to work around. Compared to drugs, it is no treatment at the moment. Damage done by autoimmune disorders early in life can rarely be fixed. Diagnostics are years off at the very least.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  There are certainly ethical issues associated with detection of autism risk during pregnancy allowing the choice for termination. I'm not sure about your point though. Fixing things after it has happened is generally hard. I am no immunologist, but preventing excessive immune response is a possibility maybe for prevention of the injury (not completely removing the immune response, just retarding it).
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    First you have to know what to look for. As many cases of autism are unexplained, there appears to be no symptoms to look for. Big leukaemia would be detected while taking a routine sample during pregnancy as done already for testing of blood immunoreactivity alongside known viral and bacterial infections. (Full blood group test preferably.) However to find less obvious immune reactions first we need to know what are we looking for and when. (during pregnancy or after) To find out requires a comparable effort to human genome project. That is progressing as ImmGen project (currently mouse stages), Human Immunology Project (ImmuneSpace) and probably some others, but getting precise and numerous enough samples during pregnancy is problematic. Parallel research is going into toxins in utero, later immune reactions after exposure to toxins and so on. Yet more is going into studying infant microbiome esp. gut microbiome which would be related to method of delivery, feeding, exposure to chemicals and so on. Any of the above might prove crucial. Or all of them. It is a young and exciting field.

AstralStorm 10y ago

Unless you accept eugenics of course or perhaps in vitro fertilization. Somewhat dirty words nowadays. Or if the problem turns out to be metabolic and thus possible to work around. Compared to drugs, it is no treatment at the moment. Damage done by autoimmune disorders early in life can rarely be fixed. Diagnostics are years off at the very least.

SubiculumCode 10y ago
There are certainly ethical issues associated with detection of autism risk during pregnancy allowing the choice for termination. I'm not sure about your point though. Fixing things after it has happened is generally hard. I am no immunologist, but preventing excessive immune response is a possibility maybe for prevention of the injury (not completely removing the immune response, just retarding it).
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  First you have to know what to look for. As many cases of autism are unexplained, there appears to be no symptoms to look for. Big leukaemia would be detected while taking a routine sample during pregnancy as done already for testing of blood immunoreactivity alongside known viral and bacterial infections. (Full blood group test preferably.) However to find less obvious immune reactions first we need to know what are we looking for and when. (during pregnancy or after) To find out requires a comparable effort to human genome project. That is progressing as ImmGen project (currently mouse stages), Human Immunology Project (ImmuneSpace) and probably some others, but getting precise and numerous enough samples during pregnancy is problematic. Parallel research is going into toxins in utero, later immune reactions after exposure to toxins and so on. Yet more is going into studying infant microbiome esp. gut microbiome which would be related to method of delivery, feeding, exposure to chemicals and so on. Any of the above might prove crucial. Or all of them. It is a young and exciting field.