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A drug discovered more than 100 years ago may hold the key to combating autism symptoms, according to a study.
Researcher Dr Robert Naviaux of the San Diego School of Medicine gave suramin, a drug first developed in 1916, to 10 autistic boys between the ages of five and 14, and noted transformative results.
"After the single dose, it was almost like a roadblock had been released," he said. "If the future studies show that there's continued health benefits, this could be a game-changer for families with autism."
The study, which has been published in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, saw five of the participants receive suramin, while the remainder were given placebos. Included in the group were four non-verbal children – two six year olds and two 14 year olds.
"The six year old and the 14 year old who received suramin said the first sentences of their lives about one week after the single suramin infusion," Naviaux told the UC San Diego Health website. "This did not happen in any of the children given the placebo."
Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/390222-autism-research-suramin-symptoms/
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Wednesday May 31 2017, @07:19PM (4 children)
Yeah OK putting "medical" on anything makes the price 100x whatever.
None the less, just saying, from a normie non-medical perspective, for way over $500K we're expecting a real world implementation of "The Fly" or "Spiderman"
Either that or we're expecting better sets and special effects for "The Fly" or "Spiderman"
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday May 31 2017, @08:56PM (2 children)
The fun part here is that he became The Fly by failing to perform sufficient animal studies before progressing to humans. A clear case of when proper testing procedures would have been beneficial.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @09:05PM (1 child)
Not at all true since he did plenty of rigorous testing and yet he still became The Fly because the machine had a failure mode which he had not even considered to be possible.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:58AM
Hardly rigorous if something as ubiquitous as a fly hadn't occurred yet. And why *wouldn't* he have considered such a failure mode (I'm assuming it was simply the presence of the fly, not some other independent failure mode that happened simultaneously? I don't think I ever actually saw it)
And that's ignoring the fact that the entire premise is a bit ridiculous - if a teleporter accident somehow fused the DNA of the beings being teleported - both man and fly would heavily outnumbered by skin mites, not to mention bacteria - our cells are outnumbered by what, like 100-to-one by the bacteria living within us? Though I'll admit "The Bacteria" would have been a much tougher sell as a horror movie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @10:33PM
OK, I agree let's skip it. No research into anything that costs more than $5 upfront.
How about we also do no military adventures unless they pay for themselves with sweet oil revenue?