RE: Re: Any thoughts on this UK paper about mercury levels in urine?

[Guest guest]

That was my initial thought too - mercury excretion in the urine tells us nothing about what's sitting in the central nervous system or brain does it? With my dd her urine shows tiny amounts of hg excretion but hair results meets 2, nearly 3, of counting rules (had therm. containing vax. as baby and toddler). ALso not sure why they mention Amy Holmes - what is her involvement with this? Would like to hear AC's opinion on this to gain full picture. Janet To: Autism-Biomedical-Europe From: mysuperteach@...Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:33:19 +0000Subject: Re: Any thoughts on this UK paper about mercury levels in urine?

I've only read this very quickly, but some initial thoughts:

how much hg you're excreting can have very little to do with how much is in you causing damage. eg "This study makes no comparisons of brain mercury levels between the two groups"

the paper methodology seems to want to dismiss outliers, which is exactly what most of our kids are, although they do say at the end that these kids might be worth looking at more closely.

the damage caused by hg in bolus doses doesn't just stop because the exposure has stopped--it sets off a cascade of problems in children. none of that is measure in urine excretion.

Anita

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> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029547#pone-0029547-g001

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> I'm not good at reading the diagrams. Apparently the ASD children and the special school children had more mercury in their urine. I'mnotsure about the classification of the children ie which group they were assigned to. Eg ASD children might also be in special school.

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> One group of children was much older than the others (special school) and would have been affected by circulating pubertal hormones, I think.Also any child in a special school, even if not diagnosed with an ASD, may have a biological problem that might include problems with heavy metals.

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> Also - can you assume anything about the effect of thiomersal in a baby when you are only measuring their urinary mercury excretion once they are 8 -12 years of age?

> Margaret

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