Autisim Spectrum Disorder and Autoimmune Disease

[Guest guest]

This is a copy of a post I left on Dr. Goldbergs site, was wondering

if anyone in this group was familiar with the relation between

autisim and auto-immune disease in families:

Hello. I am new here and I ran across your site in researching Autism

Spectrum Disorder. Let me give you a brief intro of my history. I am

39 years old and about 4 years ago I was diagnosed with Auto immune

Hepatitis and Trigeminal Neuralgia. My questions here concern my 16

year old son. He was born with TORCH Syndrome and Septo-Optic

Dysplasia.As well as Hemolytic Anemia and Jaundice. He has a current

diagnosis of Moderate Mental Retardation with an IQ of 43 and Major

Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features. He has been hospitalized

a total of seven times since August of 2006 on a behavioral health

unit. We are getting ready to voluntarily place him in a residential

setting for a 60 day probationary period. We had him tested yesterday

afternoon for Autism. The lady told us that he quite possibly could

be high functioning autistic. He is very musically inclined and can

play almost any song by ear, he knows no musical staffs or notes. He

has a lot of signs of Aspergers and a lot of Sensory Issues as well.

My question is, I have read your information on your site concerning

the relation between Auto immune Disorder and Autism Spectrum

Disorder. I am wondering could the two be related in my family? As I

stated I have auto immune disorder and when my son was born, he had

hemolytic anemia, which almost floored the doctors because they said

it was as though he was having an RH reaction and my blood is RH

positive! I am wondering could he have in fact had Auto immune

Hemolytic Anemia? Also, I noted your reference to Cytemogalovirus and

Herpes and Rubella, don't know if you are familiar with TORCH

Syndrome but my son tested positive for Rubella at birth, but the

docs thought it was him picking up my immunity since I had rubella as

a child. We were told he had the O part of TORCH. I know that Auto

immune disease seems to be somewhat infectious related from what I

have heard. I mentioned this to his Family Physician today and he

seemed to think that he could not inherit the tendency for auto

immune disease however I don't believe that. I know that Thyroid

Disorder and Rheumatoid Arthritis are Auto immune related and they

run in our family. Is there any where I can find more info on this,

if in fact Autism is related to Auto immune Disorder? Thank you for

taking the time to read my post and I look forward to hearing from

you!

Gwen

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