A study has revealed that two novel — and somewhat unusual — therapies may help treat symptoms in individuals with autism; one involves using hot tubs to raise body temperature and the other involves the ingesting of parasitic worms.
There's been considerable evidence recently suggesting that inflammation may play an important role in mediating neuropsychiatric symptoms. Growing evidence suggests that the condition may be a result of an over-active immune system, which results in high levels of inflammation. This theory is supported by the fact that about a third of autistic individuals show clinical improvement when they have a fever or are placed in a hot environment such as a hot tub at 102 degrees Fahrenheit.
In the second part of the study, the researchers examined the effects of treating 10 high-functioning autistic adults with Trichuris suis ova (TSO) — the eggs of the worm Trichuris Trichiura (whip worm). Research has shown that worms learn to survive in humans by dampening the body's inflammatory responses.
"What we found was when they were on the worm, there was an improvement in three different scales that measured rigidity, flexibility or insistence on sameness," Hollander said.
Their findings http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/12/12/how-parasitic-worms-and-hot-tubs-may-treat-autism-symptoms/ still need to be replicated.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday August 17 2014, @09:41PM
It's Trichuris trichiura - at least according to the linked Wikipedia page.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by martyb on Monday August 18 2014, @01:37AM
Right you are and it is now corrected. Thanks for pointing that out!
To keep this at least marginally on-topic, I'd like to blame this mistake on the heat. It's either that or I don't have enough worms to go fishing for some other excuse.worms.
=)
But seriously, I have a few good friends who each have a child diagnosed with various degrees of autism. I'd welcome anything which would ease these kid's daily struggles.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 18 2014, @01:53AM
Yes... sorry, my bad for not catching it: I did it from work/break and had to work fast on posting it.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 18 2014, @02:15AM
is from the original article
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Funny) by pert.boioioing on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:06PM
Sometimes when musing about autism, its causes, treatments and potential cures, I like to wonder what would happen if a perfect autism vaccine was developed...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:27PM
Since it is a spectrum condition that seems infeasible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 18 2014, @03:27AM
As a parent of two boys, both diagnosed with autism, I mused about this question myself. We didn't blame the vaccines for the condition, but I wondered - if I could wave a magic wand and suddenly make my child perfectly average, 50% middle of the road as much like everybody else as possible, would I want that? Would I have wanted my parents to do that for me? At times, yes, I might have asked my parents to do that for me, but only rarely, and with the benefit of hindsight I am sure I would have regretted it. No, is the simple answer, autism is not a disease to be cured, it is a way of being, different from the norm, not better, and not worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:06PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Subsentient on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:10PM
Tell that to the people slamming their head on the desk and waving their hands in repetitive motions.
I've seen that. Aspergers is an illness too, but it has advantages. It's on the autism spectrum.
Honestly the autoimmune idea seems like a good one. Give everyone immuno-suppressants and see if it helps.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by Theophrastus on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:18PM
i will assume that every pathetic case depicted here [google.com] is the direct result of mistreating this "not an illness"?
it's comments like this anonymous-coward's which make the parents of these poor folks particularly horrible as they end up blaming themselves.
Autism is misunderstood, emotionalized, and politicized exactly because it's so hard for the experts to characterize. It is very likely, for example, not a single (divisible) pathology.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 18 2014, @03:16AM
Mistreating, misunderstanding, though mostly intolerance, ignorance, and a lack of empathy for what the kids are going through.
It is amazing the difference in behavior of kids with autism when switching them between caregivers who "get it" and those who don't.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:30PM
finding the causes and treatments for autism is important for "neurotypicals" too because it could lead us into unlocking the secret to savant syndrome [wikipedia.org], perhaps even allowing us to induce savantism without any of the downsides that typically accompany it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:37PM
> allowing us to induce savantism
Sounds like The Focused in Vernor Vinge's classic, A Deepness in the Sky. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 18 2014, @03:13AM
Read a bit about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (yes, it is a real thing - though it might better be named Suppression than Stimulation since the stimulation usually serves to block functions.) It is limited in the brain regions it can reach, but they have achieved some interesting results.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by SlimmPickens on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:55PM
They haven't grokked their own research. The worms are in fact symbiotic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:30PM
> They haven't grokked their own research. The worms are in fact symbiotic.
Only by accident. If we weren't living in such an antiseptic world we wouldn't have over-sensitisied immune systems that need to be suppressed back into a normal state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @10:59PM
NT
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @12:17AM
(a) Why are you coming to Soylent News to moan about what Slashdot didn't do?
(b) Did you miss being notified that Robin Williams died? Because I'm pretty sure that every general news outlet mentioned it, repeatedly. Why should Slashdot add to the redundancy?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gznork26 on Monday August 18 2014, @12:18AM
Soylent News is people. That includes you. If you want something discussed, submit a story.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday August 17 2014, @11:30PM
Back in the day, a Physician would wear a cloak with two pockets. One pocket would contain tincture of mercury, and the other laudanum (opium). If the patient was bound up, the mercury (Dr. Rush's "Thunderbolt Pills", for example), and if the patient was too, um, runny nothing like opium to stanch the flow. Besides that, however, and perhaps earlier, were the worms. Not worms, exactly, but leeches, blood-suckers. The idea is that patients suffered from an excess of blood, or bad blood, so a little bloodletting could only do one good. Steve Martin once did a skit on Saturday Night Live where he played "the Barber of York" (and yes, medical doctors often were barbers, or physicians, as opposed to real Doctors, who are scholars and teachers). Faced with a patient who was swooning, the diagnosed the ailment as "melancholia", saying: "We used to believe that melancholia was caused by demonic possession, but we now know that it is caused by an imbalance of the Light and Dark Humours. Bleed her!" We now, much later and with empirically based-medicine, call this condition "anemia", low blood iron. Losing blood is likely not a good idea.
But this leads to the point: persons who could not afford medical care were, until quite recently historically, much more likely to survive. Where a patient had the good luck to recover, it probably was not a result of the "medicine" administered, but the shock to their immune system, such as is being proposed by this study. Interesting. On there other hand, this sounds like a rip-off from the plot of World War Z.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 18 2014, @03:30AM
I like the backstory for the worm-winding staff symbol... takes training to pull the worms out without breaking them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @03:50AM
Classic medicine? More like "dark ages" medicine or sheer quackery.
The ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Chinese had much better treatments.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/usamah2.html [fordham.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation#China [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_medicine#Hippocrates_and_Hippocratic_medicine [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 18 2014, @01:54AM
There's been a few articles about fresh research results about autism. But I encourage anyone to find out who has financed these. Some financiers have stakes in certain outcomes to back up their agenda.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 18 2014, @03:07AM
Yeah, those whipworm farmers are really out to hoodwink us all.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Username on Monday August 18 2014, @03:10AM
I think the researchers watched The Road to Wellville one too many times.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 19 2014, @07:30AM
If this research can be replicated, it might explain why some but not all autistic children improve on special diets. For that matter, it would explain why finding a single root cause for autism eludes us: there is no single root cause, but a variety if conditions that set off an inflammatory process, any one of which may cause autism is vulnerable individuals.