viral infections in the blood of people with autism

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1: J

Neurosci Res. 2007 Apr;85(5):1143-8. LinkOut

Evidence for Mycoplasma ssp., Chlamydia pneunomiae, and human

herpes virus-6 coinfections in the blood of patients with autistic

spectrum disorders.

Nicolson

GL, Gan

R, Nicolson

NL, Haier

J.

The Institute for Molecular Medicine,

Huntington Beach, California 92647, USA. gnicolson@...

We examined the blood of 48 patients from

central and southern California diagnosed with autistic spectrum

disorders (ASD) by using forensic polymerase chain reaction and found

that a large subset (28/48 or 58.3%) of patients showed evidence of

Mycoplasma spp. infections compared with two of 45 (4.7%) age-matched

control subjects (odds ratio = 13.8, P < 0.001). Because ASD

patients have a high prevalence of one or more Mycoplasma spp. and

sometimes show evidence of infections with Chlamydia pneumoniae, we

examined ASD patients for other infections. Also, the presence of one

or more systemic infections may predispose ASD patients to other

infections, so we examined the prevalence of C. pneumoniae (4/48 or

8.3% positive, odds ratio = 5.6, P < 0.01) and human herpes virus-6

(HHV-6, 14/48 or 29.2%, odds ratio = 4.5, P < 0.01) coinfections in

ASD patients. We found that Mycoplasma-positive and -negative ASD

patients had similar percentages of C. pneumoniae and HHV-6 infections,

suggesting that such infections occur independently in ASD patients.

Control subjects also had low rates of C. pneumoniae (1/48 or 2.1%) and

HHV-6 (4/48 or 8.3%) infections, and there were no coinfections in

control subjects. The results indicate that a large subset of ASD

patients shows evidence of bacterial and/or viral infections (odds

ratio = 16.5, P < 0.001). The significance of these infections in

ASD is discussed in terms of appropriate treatment. © 2007

Wiley-Liss, Inc.

PMID: 17265454 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]