The study “confirms a lot of what people are thinking,” said Calliope Holingue, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Maryland, who asked whether there is a link between autism and autism. autism and the microbiome may be partly due to diet. “That being said, I think it doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility that the microbiome plays a role in autism itself.”
One criticism, she says, is that the study looked at a snapshot in time, rather than over a long period of time. “Although the authors did not find that autism itself is related to the composition or diversity of the gut microbiome, that does not mean that at any one point in time,” Holingue said. there, the microbiome was not involved, such as before the study. Yap acknowledges that to assess causality, longitudinal studies will be important.
While there are no studies to date clearly displayed In it, early hints of a relationship between the gut and autism have planted the seeds of hope for a treatment. For example, a research team at Arizona State University published a study in 2017 18 children with autism, who also suffer from gastrointestinal problems, and performed fecal transplants on them. In 2019, the group published a two years follow up, and reported an almost 50% improvement in autism-related symptoms. But the study was not randomized, had no control group, was not compared with placebo, and had a small sample size.
Holingue says the Arizona State University studies are a source of controversy in the field. “Some people are huge fans of them. And I think some other people are very concerned that they do more harm than good, and it may not be clear what the purpose is,” she said. A real source of controversy among people with autism and their families is whether the ultimate goal of research should be to find treatments. “Many autistic communities have been quite vocal in saying that they do not want research to focus on autism cures or treatments for autism, but other conditions,” says Holingue. happening at the same time and the things that support them.
Despite a lack of concrete evidence to prove effectiveness, early research encouraged clinics to offer treatments for people with autism, including interventions such as probiotics, prebiotics, and probiotics. and fecal microbiota transplantation, or FMT (or less often, “transplant”). Stool cultures — in which bacteria from the stool of a healthy person are passed to a patient anal or oral — have been shown to be beneficial for a number of conditions: namely, in Treatment of colitis caused by Clostridioides difficile, an often debilitating, sometimes fatal, condition that arises from the overuse of antibiotics, which destroy the balance of bacteria in the gut. This success has turned into hype when it comes to trying to treat a growing number of diseases – including autism.
“When a person with autism or [their] James Cusack, CEO of Autistica, a UK autism research charity. “And that can be a very traumatic experience for the family and for the person with autism.” It also means that parents may feel compelled to find alternative ways to ensure that their child develops in the same way as their peers. (A 2015 study surveyed parents and found that nearly 9 out of 10 were looking for complementary and alternative medicine for their child’s autism.) “And it’s really sad that people are in this position. What we should do is try and understand why people are making these decisions and try to support them in taking a different approach.”
