8 ms·

Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

• davisr 5mo ago
  So all I gotta do is eat some poop and it will save me from becoming a handsome, funny, unique genius?
  • n64controller 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • simonklitj 5mo ago
      Source please? I’m seeing M75/F77 w/o learning disability, and M72/F70 w/ learning disability: https://www.autism.org.uk/learn/knowledge-hub/professional-practice/research-life-expectancy-of-uk-autistic-people https://www.autism.org.uk/learn/knowledge-hub/professional-p...
      • roywiggins 5mo ago
        imho part of the communication problem is that a 6 year reduction actually is large, but it doesn't sound large. Smoking takes about 10 years off your life, and it's deadly in a very mechanical and understood way.
        • simonklitj 5mo ago
          Yeah, I’m not disputing that, and it’s worth a lot of consideration and research. But, it’s quite far from 36 years.
    • loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
      Source?
  • quux 5mo ago
    You don't eat it, don't be silly.... you stick the poop up your butt
    • saalweachter 5mo ago
      I believe the best procedure is actually sticking it in your nose. (They run a tube through your nose, down your throat, through the stomach to the top of the intestines, and introduce the bacterial slurry there.)
      • someguyiguess 5mo ago
        Pretty sure there’s a shorter path to the top of the intestines than through the nose but I’m no Biologist.
        • tyre 5mo ago
          If you’re implying it is through the rectum, you’ve definitely got some bio to brush up on. The small intestine alone is >20ft long.
        • dacops 5mo ago
          There really isn't. From the mouth is basically the same distance and it contains teeth and a tongue. Through the rectum is much much much farther through meters of intestine. Through the skin creates a surgical hole that's going to be difficult to keep sterile. The shortest safe path is via the nostril.
      • throw310822 5mo ago
        Makes you wonder how hard would it be to just put it in a swallowable capsule that dissolves only in the upper intestine. Also, "fecal transplant" is marketable only to weirdos. "Probiotic infusion" would work better. For those who want to gain some artistic talent, there's this (but is expensive): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit
        • 5mo ago
  • LoganDark 5mo ago
    Well no, what they're saying is it seems to be capable of reducing autism-related struggles and misbehavior, not that it can somehow remove autism. Truly removing autism in any meaningful way is probably impossible since the brain was trained with it since birth.
    • roywiggins 5mo ago
      No, that appears to be the implication of this study, which frankly seems like such a large effect that I'm pretty skeptical! I'd say "where's the control group" except the claimed effect is so large that you kind of don't need one, if it's real: > Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD. Emphasis mine. If you are below the cutoff for mild ASD you wouldn't be diagnosed at all.
      • saalweachter 5mo ago
        That was the study without a control; for the placebo controlled study, they don't give the numbers, just say "statistically significant improvements" on several metrics. (Without a control group, you have questions about how people of that age generally progress, and what other treatment/therapies they receive over those 2 years. The phase 1 trial was with children whose parents presumably sought ever possible way to help them, while the placebo controlled phase 2 was adults who may have plateaued.)
      • LoganDark 5mo ago
        > If you are below the cutoff for mild ASD you wouldn't be diagnosed at all. That makes sense, since ASD is a disorder classification and is mainly relevant for treatment and benefits. Plenty of autistic people are not diagnosed with ASD. The article certainly could do more to differentiate between the autistic spectrum itself and the diagnosis of ASD, but as long as you know not to conflate the two, it seems perfectly clear to me.
        • deleted 5mo ago
          [deleted]
  • sleight42 5mo ago
    Autism fetishism. This comment should be deleted.
• jdw64 5mo ago
  Personally, anyone looking to get a fecal transplant from Sir Demis Hassabis will have to line up behind me. I want to be first in line.
  • oliculipolicula 5mo ago
    Would you prefer the oral route? Just kidding. Reading HN has the benefit of making me wonder how brainwashed I am. Reflecting now, maybe it's my deeply held belief that everything is propaganda[0] and nobody that appears smart is honest (with the possible exception of a handful of Finns I have met in person and Western Europeans that I have met online, plus a couple scions of the ultrarich or geniuses I have had the luck to uh hang out with, the last category of totally unknown autistic --compared to Demis-- and thus defying the assumption of "appearance"..? anyways.. ) .. so should I be absolutely terrified of myself "just appearing smart but in no way autistic" to others? A question to ask the therapist :) [0] https://www.psypost.org/intelligence-makes-people-more-trusting-but-early-hardship-cuts-this-benefit-in-half/ https://www.psypost.org/intelligence-makes-people-more-trust...
• Arodex 5mo ago
  >Editor's note: Readers often ask us for follow-ups on memorable stories. What has happened to this story over the years? This article was originally published in 2019 but it has been re-edited and updated with new information current as of April 7, 2025. Enjoy! Now that is something that should be done more often - especially in science journalism, but not only. We cruelly lack long-term vision - not only forward but backwards too.
  • embedding-shape 5mo ago
    The typical publishing methods kind of favors that approach of publishing new articles instead of updating existing ones though, for better or worse. Maybe science journalism should just adopt a wiki-model instead, where there is one article per "subject" then any new (confirmed?) information/data goes into that, and interested people can subscribe to updates there instead. Wikis generally have much better long-term maintenance given the right individuals running it, compared to a "publication journal" where things tend to get out of date eventually, with no way of actually seeing when old articles get updated.
    • Sharlin 5mo ago
      No problem with publishing new articles, as long as they're properly contextualized and link to their predecessors – and the latter updated to link to the new information as well.
  • aaron695 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • Aurornis 5mo ago
    I agree about the updates. However, news sites like this one aren’t combing through research to find things to update. They’re responding to PR outreach from companies. Did you notice there isn’t actually a link to a new publication? It’s only quotes from the company. They’re repeating PR material, not updates on the research. There’s a subtext here that isn’t immediately obvious without reading more from the company trying to commercialize this formula: Their small phase 2 trial is underway but results haven’t fully been released as far as I can tell. It appears they’re trying to do a PR push based on their early claims of positive results, before publishing everything. If anyone can find more details please correct me if I’m wrong. This can be a little suspicious when companies do this because before the full results are available because it’s usually associated with a rushed push to drive investor interest at the time they think it’s most optimal. When the optimal PR push timing is before full results are released, it’s not a good signal that the results are on track to be great.
• geremiiah 5mo ago
  What's more plausible? Did they cure low functioning autism in two years? Or did they simpily miscategorize the kids and the kids grew out of their diagnosis as they matured?
  • leikarnes 5mo ago
    I'm guessing that the kids now have less stomachpain, constipation, and are feeling less bloated/nauseous. Thus have less voilent reactions
    • roywiggins 5mo ago
      Their first study allegedly resulted in "44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD"- ie, practically cured, from a diagnostic point of view.
    • geremiiah 5mo ago
      That's what I'm saying. It's a misdiagnosis. Whether or not they have tantrums should not be a factor in whether or not they are high-functioning or low-functioning.
      • freehorse 5mo ago
        It does not have to be misdiagnosis. If kid has both autism and gut issues, the gut issues could make the autistic symptoms worse, by causing distress to the kid, which could make the interactions with caregivers harder for both in a quite formative period. Treating the gut issues could help this way without gut being directly related to autism and without it being a misdiagnosis. It is telling that they report quite high (0.7) correlations between improvement in gut and autistic symptoms. However they say they also have an adult trial running that seems to show similar effects, so there might be something more into it.
      • wizzwizz4 5mo ago
        "High-functioning" and "low-functioning" are not meaningful as permanent diagnoses, because how a person functions is heavily-dependent on their environment (social, physical, and societal), including stimulus and chemical signalling from their own body. An environment in which one person can thrive, labour, and enjoy life could be boring or incomprehensible or unduly stressful to another. I know people who would be diagnosed "low-functioning" if assessed in an everyday environment, but "high-functioning" if assessed in a clinical environment, and I know people who might not be diagnosed at all in an everyday environment but would be diagnosed with several seconds of acronyms in a clinical environment; and I know people who've been able to fight to get themselves an everyday environment that works for them, and I know people with vast potential who have conceded that fight and are rotting in the social care system. If you eliminate what "should not be a factor" from the diagnostic process, then you eliminate the high-functioning / low-functioning distinction entirely. But all models are wrong, and some models are useful: while I find this particular model distasteful, there are contexts where it is necessary to get people in an environment where they can thrive (which, for children, usually means getting their parents the support they need, and occasionally the education).
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• delichon 5mo ago
  I got bad chronic constipation after four years as a strict carnivore. I didn't get relief just by adding back fiber, but I did by adding fermented foods like kimchi. I wonder if ferments are a more natural way than fecal transplants to repair the gut microbiome, possibly treating autism. Studies have been non conclusive, but this story makes me think it's worth pursuing.
  • motoboi 5mo ago
    The microbiota is passed from mother to son on birth, not totally from the environment. What we currently don’t understand is why for some people they never got them (we have techniques to transport the biota from the mother during birth for non-natural procedures) or they loose them. Even with the transplant, the microbes won’t stick around on those people (not taking about autistic people here, but people in general). Diverse food really helps, just as not eating ultraprocessed (they won’t reach the end of the intestines). Fermented and other pre or probiotics will really help too. But none of those will recover the biota in some people.
    • jwrallie 5mo ago
      In some countries the number of kids born through c-section are very high, more than half the kids in Brazil are born that way for example, so definitely people can be healthy without getting it from their mothers.
      • mejutoco 5mo ago
        I read it is a practice these days to do this fecal "rub" for newborns as a way to compensate for the C-section lack of it. I do not know if it happens in Brazil. Another factor to consider.
        • giarc 5mo ago
          I've never heard of moms doing fecal rubs, but I've heard of many that do vaginal "transplants". I work in a hospital and we get questions quite a bit, moms will often take moist, sterile gauze and conduct the transplant themselves (staff can't really be involved for liability issues).
• ZoomZoomZoom 5mo ago
  Absolutely outrageous/hilarious clickbait title. It's not for autism but totally opposite.
  • dahart 5mo ago
    That’s valid English. You take ibuprofen for headaches, or go to the hospital for a broken bone. Assuming the word ‘for’ means ‘causes’ is incorrect.
  • jamesnorden 5mo ago
    Did you also think "treatment for cancer" caused cancer where there was none?
    • ZoomZoomZoom 5mo ago
      The keyword there is "treatment". It can be "cure" or "remedy" or something like that. But the title has "transplants". The contrast is obvious, though I'm not native, so YMMV.
      • dahart 5mo ago
        A transplant in a medical context is a type of treatment. I’d be willing to bet using ‘for’ like this works the same way in your native language.
        • ZoomZoomZoom 5mo ago
          A retina transplant is for vision, not for blindness. And you'd lose the bet, in my case that would be a word that dual-serves as a directional preposition meaning "away"/"from" and depending on the situation it's an opposite of "for", but not exactly "against", closer to "for dealing with smth"/"for solving smth.". If you think more about it, perhaps the stumble is understandable, if you conceptualize Autism not simply a disorder requiring treatment, but a type of neurodiversity. Then the intuition of interpreting the "for" as the "X for Y" conventional medical syntax does not trigger and the title reads awkward.
• manoDev 5mo ago
  I wonder if there’s any study linking C-section birth, autism and microbiota? Or newborns that have to stay in incubators? I understand a newborn gets its microbiota naturally by contact with the mom in the first days, maybe all the sterile environment involved in surgery changes that.
• _puk 5mo ago
  >> In early 2022 Krajmalnik-Brown and colleagues patented a specific bacterial formulation and spun-off a commercial company called Gut-Brain Axis Therapeutics. I was a little surprised to see this. So the university researchers use time and money from the university to make a discovery, extending on previous published research, and then patent it and start their own for-profit? Excuse my ignorance, but is that how it's done generally? Where's the upside for all those who are potentially affected? It kinda makes sense - Presumably the university is involved somewhere still, and it needs to be commercialised somehow, but..
  • ktallett 5mo ago
    Yes this is really common. Not all universities own the research you do. I have a similar setup within my university. They get to use the research technique I've worked on, but I have the rights to take it out of the university and sell it.
  • hariseldom 5mo ago
    Universities often keep up to 50% of rights over IP in such cases but I am unsure about this specific case.
    • mkl 5mo ago
      100% is common. Stanford was paid hundreds of millions by Google over the years for the use of the patented PageRank algorithm, invented by Google's founders while Stanford students, and therefore owned by Stanford. Most universities have IP policies giving them ownership of most of the IP their academics create, and student IP may or may not be included. Some exceptions are Duke and Waterloo.
  • bflesch 5mo ago
    Yes, it's really common. Most universities actually support this and there is a specific contractual framework for staff which basically says "If you create a company during or after your work at university which touches the field you were researching in, we get 1% (or 10% or 20%) of your annual revenue as license fees". The alternatives are lengthy court battles between universities and their best (e.g. most commercial) researchers. This creates bad PR for the university and uncertainty for the researcher & their startups because potential investors don't like open court cases. So people came around to make this kind of license fee contract and researchers check it before deciding to join a certain university. Not a fan of gene / bacteria patents though.
• directevolve 5mo ago
  Many autistic children have extremely limited diets. For example, a geneticist friend of mine saw a case where an autistic child had been referred for genetic testing because of horrific, chronic, spontaneous wounds on gums and skin. Turned out to be scurvy, because he had exclusively eaten Wheat Thins for the last 3-4 years, which aren’t fortified with vitamin C. I would fully expect that a monotonous diet leads to a heavy skew in the gut microbiome as specific bacterial species that thrive on that diet are selected for, others against. It makes some sense that a fecal transplant could repair the damage. If the diet has shifted or expanded, the transplant could lead to long term benefits by restoring newly-viable bacterial species, perhaps by facilitating digestion of the new types of food. I’d be curious to see a factoring out of the diet composition, gut microbiome, genetics, and severity of autism symptoms.
  • smallnix 5mo ago
    Imagine the factor overlooked is the nasty but nutritional hospital food they got when receiving the transplant (assuming they got hospitalized).
    • SoftTalker 5mo ago
      Doesn't seem like something that would require an inpatient stay.
      • mrgoldenbrown 5mo ago
        In my experience (instant cure for recurrent c. diff) a fecal transplant is easier and simpler than a colonoscopy, which themselves are easy enough to be outpatient.
      • delecti 5mo ago
        > [...] the treatment, which involved a bowel cleanse and daily transplants of fecal microbiota over a period of seven to eight weeks Maybe I'm misinterpreting what the process of that daily transplant looked like, but I expect they ate a not insignificant amount of hospital food if there were 7-8 weeks of daily treatments.
• ck2 5mo ago
  original news source: https://news.asu.edu/20190409-discoveries-autism-symptoms-reduced-nearly-50-percent-two-years-after-fecal-transplant https://news.asu.edu/20190409-discoveries-autism-symptoms-re... actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42183-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42183-0
• hank2000 5mo ago
  The number of stories I’ve read in the last 15 years that amount to: “desperate after years of trying everything, we bought a blender and ground up my wife’s shit and put it up my butt, and within a 24 hours I was totally fine” Is kind of impressive.
  • shlant 5mo ago
    my wife is autistic and suffers from many gastro illnesses including MCAS and SIBO. The amount of times i've seriously thought of figuring out the logistics of giving her a fecal transplant from my iron stomach...
• senfiaj 5mo ago
  I would still be cautious with such findings. Many autistic people are picky eaters, also some of them have issues with peristalsis. This might affect the microbiome as well. While it's plausible that it might help a subset of people, we should not overgeneralize since autism is a very heterogeneous condition, usually with pronounced genetic predisposition. Overall, it doesn't seem to be a cure.
  • tt_dev 5mo ago
    I had a similar question to. From my understanding of the study, which was double blind placebo study, it does not treat autism but its shown to greatly improve symptoms of autism. They basically wiped the gut clean with antibiotics then started treating and saw improvements. Could be that GI issues increase irritability which makes the measured autism symptoms more aggressive but it looks very promising for families. Not affiliated just read the study.
  • rossdavidh 5mo ago
    True that, but it could be both cause and effect. There are reports that gut bacteria can induce depression, which benefits the bacteria because it sends more calorie-rich, highly processed food down the gullet (think ice cream binges when depressed). Not hard to believe that gut bacteria optimized for a particular kind of food could evolve the ability to induce their host to eat that food exclusively. It would have the side-benefit (for the bacteria) of reducing competition from other microbes that aren't optimized for that, by starving them out. Things aren't always just cause or effect, especially in biology.
    • senfiaj 5mo ago
      Maybe. IMHO there is also a microbiome hype train in the recent years. Most of these microbiome studies aren't considering a lot confounding factors. Here is a paper: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01231-9 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01231-9 that found only very little evidence for association between ASD and gut microbiome.
• a-dub 5mo ago
  no placebo arm. result could be due to unisolated factors present in clinical trial fixturing.
• tt_dev 5mo ago
  Title is a bit misleading. It’s not a fecal transplant. It’s tablets and powder (for the pitt-hopkins cases) of microbes from fecal donors. Consumes orally. More like fecal food?
  • Balgair 5mo ago
    What did you think a fecal transplant was?
    • huhkerrf 5mo ago
      I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I always assumed a fecal transplant went in the other door EDIT: looks like I was right, it can be done that way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_microbiota_transplant#Mechanism_of_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_microbiota_transplant#Me...
      • 1dom 5mo ago
        No embarrassment, I thought the same. Feels like a far more sensible thought than fecal transplant via the mouth, for many reasons. Vindicating edit!
    • dyauspitr 5mo ago
      It many times is just someone else’s poop put into your butt
    • SoftTalker 5mo ago
      Suppository.
    • simulator5g 5mo ago
      I mean the word transplant implies that it does not go in the mouth. Unless the patient uh... does things a little differently.
• Aurornis 5mo ago
  I think this is the clinical trial registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03408886?tab=results https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03408886?tab=results It is marked as having results submitted but quality review has not been completed. N=60 and a placebo group, which is better than the N=18 and no placebo group of the first study. There have been so many small scale trials showing amazing autism improvements that failed to replicate in larger, better controlled trials. I wouldn’t get excited yet. The typical pattern is to show unbelievably good results in the first open-label trial with a small number of patients (their n=18 trial that claims to have cured severe autism in many children), squeak by with some marginal improvement in the next trial over placebo, then the third trial becomes a game of trying to keep the study small enough that they can hope to p-hack a result that the FDA might accept.
  • cpncrunch 5mo ago
    Study completed in 2022, but still no results posted or study published.
    • Sverigevader 5mo ago
      I've never really thought about this but, could it be because they don't want people to "try this at home"? Either because of safety issues, or my actual hypothesis, because they want to keep their possible pool of candidates as big as possible?
      • cpncrunch 5mo ago
        No, they have a patent so they would be in a hurry to publish if the results were good. From the comments in the article above, it sounds like it may have failed it's primary outcome (autism symptoms). They only say there was significant benefit for "average of all symptoms", but it isn't clear if that is the same thing.
      • dmix 5mo ago
        A lot of studies take time to release results.
• mgaunard 5mo ago
  So if I eat somebody else's poo I'll become more social? An unexpected result for sure.
• andy_ppp 5mo ago
  AFAIK fecal transplants do not work well long term, has there been any research in making them more sticky? Lots of things you could trial but I have a feeling it’s the immune system responding to the right bacteria incorrectly…
  • simulator5g 5mo ago
    The bacteria in your gut come from food, the long-term fix is to eat a better diet. Unfortunately, this is quite confusing for most people because you can't see the microbiome in your food, and the only practical way to sense what kinds of bacteria you're promoting with your diet, is to ask yourself "how do you feel" which can be affected by all sorts of unrelated things. I mean, most people don't even really think about how they feel, they wouldn't be able to answer the question.
• wartywhoa23 5mo ago
  So there is finally a huge job market to for all those affected by AI-driven workforce purges: that of fecal donorship! All applicants will be fed recycled byproducts for free.
• thisisidiotic 5mo ago
  Yeah i'm not doing that. I'll just stay this way.
• croisillon 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• Der_Einzige 5mo ago
  First they gave them the name "assburgers" (aspergers) and now this is the solution medicine is proposing? It's like the medical community wants all high functioning autistics to get bullied like hell in their formative years. Similar irony to "lisp" being unpronounceable by the very people who have a lisp.
  • simulator5g 5mo ago
    Its unfortunate that society no longer has any mechanism to prevent someone named something like "Asperger" from naming things after themselves. This was a helpful side effect of bullying, like when you fix a bug and it turns out that some people actually relied the incorrect behavior.
• rattray 5mo ago
  > Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD. Pretty incredible if true!
  • imdsm 5mo ago
    I think the terminology of "incredible" is the operative word but I agree, if it could help, great. But I'm very skeptical. I find it hard to think that your gut biome can affect your brain so much that you struggle with social queues but are able to have an amazing memory. But then I've met people not on "the spectrum" who have an amazing memory, such as a professor I recently met with who could remember the page numbers for certain phrases in books. Perhaps Asperger-level people just have the ability with the added challenges of autism? who knows
    • ttz 5mo ago
      Savantism is a separate concept from autism, though popular culture has somehow associated the two.
    • ball_of_lint 5mo ago
      You should read up - you're pretty obviously misunderstanding the diagnosis. Maybe think of this as removing a long-standing distraction or irritant. Like turning down the music from 120 decibels to 80 while you're trying to work.
      • rattray 5mo ago
        Hmm, that's one explanation, but I'm curious what leads you to believe it's the correct one? I'm struck by this quote, which I'd be surprised if they could be explained fully by the distraction-reduction mentioned: > "Evaluation of symptoms on the Parent Global Impressions found that the treatment group at the end of part 2 improved more than the placebo group in part 1 on nearly all symptoms, with statistically significant improvements in GI, receptive language, and average of all symptoms. There were also marginally significant improvements in tantrums, stimming/perseveration, and cognition."
• wackget 5mo ago
  First website where I've had to disable first-party JavaScript just to be able to read a text-based article. Even Firefox's reader mode was hijacked by their anti-ad-blocker script. Shameful.
  • delecti 5mo ago
    It worked completely fine in my Firefox with uBlock Origin. I didn't have to do anything to read it, not even disabling UBO.
• vfclists 5mo ago
  I find this interesting because my first awareness of a link between gastrointestinal problems and autism was in the retracted so labelled "fraud" paper by Andrew Wakefield et al in 1998 which noted a link between gastrointestinal disease and autism in the subjects of the study. In fact it is the subject of the paper, not the MMR vaccine which was the cause of the "controversy".
• rrgok 5mo ago
  Maybe that's why some people love rimming? Is that a natural instinct to get more microbiome?
• jimnotgym 5mo ago
  Being told to eat shit has been typical of most of my experience of trying to get normies to understand my mild nuerodiversity. My slightly more serious experience is that in my late 20s I started getting digestive problems and gaining weight. I feel like my neurodiversity got worse, but that could easily be that environmental factors exposed it. How does one take advantage of a study like this? I would be difficult to get medically sanctioned poo right now. So what can I do? Coprophilia seems high risk. I mean I can eat Kimchi and oats, but that seems more about encouraging the bugs that are already there than replacing missing bugs. Are we close to over the counter poo pills?
  • AnimalMuppet 5mo ago
    Aren't probiotics essentially gut bacteria? Is the problem that they aren't the right gut bacteria, or that they get released at the wrong stage of the digestive pipeline? If it's the latter, is it just a matter of making the capsule release at the right point? Or is the problem that there are different sets of issues, and finding the right mix of bacteria to fix the issue is difficult?
• dathinab 5mo ago
  Grate example of how misleading just reading headlines can be, even if the headline isn't intentional misleading/click bait. > reduce autism symptoms > chronic gastrointestinal issues are a harsh reality > boosting microbial diversity > when [...] treat those gastrointestinal problems, their behavior improves Through my opinionated take is: - gastrointestinal issue are a common comorbidity of autism - fixing that help autistic people to mask better/easier - which makes a lot of sense as gastrointestinal issue are very stressful and so is masking. It's quite common that autistic people under stress have a harder time masking - and masking is removing many of the "symptoms" of autism at cost of stress and other risks (e.g. depression), and society(^1) is conditioning(^2) children to mask autism subconsciously all the time (^1): Pretty much any society out there. (^2): Both intentional and accidental. For most autistic people masking isn't a conscious choice, but something through live so strongly reinforced that it's done unconsciously even if they don't want to in any situation except a private one with at most some very trusted people around. --- Through a much more disturbing implication from this article is that at least in US/Arizona children with gastrointestinal issues commonly do not get appropriate treatment... Or else they couldn't have done the test as they wouldn't have found a non highly selection biased sample of autistic children. Like treating of gastrointestinal issues shouldn't be a thing you do to reduce autistic symptoms, but something you do anyway. Even if not for quality of live, then for the reason of such issues often causing much more server long term issues if they stay untreated for years.
• varispeed 5mo ago
  Certain gut bacteria supplements are actually amazing. I found they lift brain fog substantially the next day after taking.
• philsnow 5mo ago
  There's a greentext that's been floating around for a while, I don't know the original author and can't remember the exact text to search for it, but it's along the lines of > my deepest fantasy is that one day I'll be in the hospital for some random thing, they'll take blood for some test, and then when they read the results, their eyes will go wide and they'll call for a consult. The other doctor will read the results and say "you don't have the nutrient?! How do you live? You're so brave". They give me a shot, and just like that, I'm able to conduct myself in society, understand social cues, hold my attention on anything i want for any length of time, etc ... so perhaps the Nutrient is a product of a gut bacterium.
• hcfman 5mo ago
  I’ve heard that fecal transplants are also good for curing former lawyers. The bigger the hose the faster the cure.
  • hcfman 5mo ago
    BTW. I’m autistic as will be many on this list. But the idea is that someone should pump someone else’s shit into me is incredibly sick. Sounds like something off doctor Mengelers playbook. I DONT NEED CURING. There’s nothing wrong with me.
• fgfarben 5mo ago
  What's the incidence of autism in country towns without functioning septic systems?
• malwarebytess 5mo ago
  Pretty funny that picky eaters are hobbling their own minds and bodies and giving themselves severe autism. Just stop eating chicken nuggets and french fries, kids. Have some vegetables.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• crtified 5mo ago
  [dead]
• dmix 5mo ago
  They also used to think IBD (colitis) was an autoimmune disorder, but now more research is shifting to gut biome and genetics targeting non-immune pathways.
• turrican 5mo ago
  Serious question: could this work in reverse if you took a fecal transplant from someone with “severe” autism and gave it to someone below the ASD cutoff?
• naruhodo 5mo ago
  Anecdata, but in my experience, my cognitive difficulties respond very positively to commonly recommended dietary supplements for cognitive disorders such as ADHD - particularly vitamin D3 and omega 3. Zinc and magnesium... not so much. I have IBS - which could lead to nutrient deficiencies - and I've passed the initial pre-screen gate for ADHD assessment (coming soon). I also suspect autism, but the reward to cost ratio for assessment of that doesn't thrill me at the moment. A different gut microbiome might simply be a way to solve nutrient deficiencies.