Reaching New Families

[Guest guest]

I was thinking of ways for Defeat Autism Now! et al., to reach new families.

Speech, OT centers and the such, parent groups, etc.

Where else do we families with a child with autism hang out in numbers?

Please email me at autismbook1@...

Thanks.

Stan

Oh and for whoever said viruses (and other infections) are not associated with

certain

cases of autism has not reviewed the medical literature well.

This is one of the more recent publications...

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

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