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While many people are aware of the behavioural symptoms associated with autism, probably not so many realize that autistics often also have gastrointestinal problems. With that in mind, scientists at the University of Arizona recently conducted a study in which a group of 18 autistic children received fecal transplants from donors with healthy gastrointestinal systems. Not only did the procedure help to "rebalance" their gut flora, but it also improved their behaviour.
First of all, a fecal transplant is just what it sounds like. Feces from one person are screened for disease-causing organisms, and then introduced into the recipient's digestive tract. In this case, the recipients first took antibiotics for two weeks, to wipe out their existing gut flora. They then received the fecal transplant initially in a high-dose liquid form, after which it was delivered in a lower-dose powder mixed into smoothies.
Of all the possible ways I could imagine to treat autism, that was not one of them...
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 25 2017, @07:44PM
First you go the article, when is pretty sensationalist for N=18.
Then you get to the publicity page for the university research department. That includes a number of important points:
1. The study focused on children with both autism and severe gastrointestinal pain.
2. The improvement on autism reported on in the summary and news article is only discussed with respect to baseline initial symptoms. A wary mind might suspect that most autistic children would show improvement.
So then you have to go search for the journal article title, because they don't tell you or link you. It's "Microbiota Transfer Therapy alters gut ecosystem and improves gastrointestinal and autism symptoms: an open-label study".
And you go into that, and look at the comparison against controls, which surprise, surprise, the actual researchers do. And while there are differences between the experimental and control group on autism symptoms, they're genuinely hard to distinguish from noise, as both groups see very similar improvement curves over the course of the study. The only notable symptom for difference is irritability, which... like... duh?
(Score: 3, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday January 25 2017, @07:49PM
http://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-016-0225-7 [biomedcentral.com]
Together, these findings suggest that MTT is safe and well-tolerated in children with ASD ages 7–16 years. MTT led to significant improvements in both GI- and ASD-related symptoms, and the improvements were sustained at least 8 weeks after treatment. Coincident with these clinical improvements, both microbiota and phage from the donors appear to have engrafted, at least partially, in the recipients. This shifted gut microbiota of children with ASD toward that of neurotypical children is consistent with the hypothesis that gut microbiota may be at least partially responsible for GI and ASD symptoms. While this study was an open-label trial that is subject to placebo effects, these results are promising and provide a crucial step for understanding the connection between the microbiome and ASD. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study is the next step to investigate the value of MTT in treating children with ASD and GI problems.
This is more like preliminary research, then?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:10PM
That's the one. Sorry. Wasn't thinking when I posted. Shoul've linked.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:58PM
I didn't read the journal article. But TFA does not mention a control group with autism receiving a placebo. So likely just nonsense.