New Hope for Autism Treatment
Researchers from George Washington University Medical Center have discovered a way to detect a specific autism spectrum disorder by using blood samples. Additionally the researchers discovered that drugs which affect the methylation state of genes may reverse some of autism's effects.
The study is published online in the FASEB Journal.
Dr. Valerie W. Hu, from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at G.W., is one of the researchers involved in the study, and also is a mother of a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. She hopes that studies like this will lead to "therapies that are designed to address specific deficiencies that are caused by autism, thus improving the lives of affected individual."
In this study, Dr. Hu and colleagues compared cells of identical twins and sibling pairs in which one of the individuals was diagnosed with autism, but the other sibling was non-autistic. The researchers then compared genes that showed changes in DNA tagging (methylation) with a list of genes that showed different levels of expression from these same individuals. Finally, they looked at the amount of protein product produced by two genes that appear on both lists in autistic and control regions of the cerebellum and frontal cortex of the brain.
They discovered that both proteins, as predicted by the observed increase in DNA tagging, were reduced in the autistic brain. This suggests that blocking the chemical tagging of these genes may reverse symptoms of the disorder and demonstrates the feasibility of using more easily accessible cells from blood (or other non-brain tissues) for diagnostic screening.
"Since autism is very diverse in the array of symptoms present in any given individual, it is first necessary to be able to identify specific deficits in each individual in order to design and then prescribe the best treatment. As an example of this personalized approach to medicine, we identified RORA as one of the genes that was altered specifically in the sub group of autistic individuals who exhibited severe language deficits," said Dr. Hu.
We're now lucky that we are
We're now lucky that we are living in a modernized age for there are already cure to other sickness. A virus that is affecting mostly the Northwest side of The United States and Canada is making news headlines nationwide. Don't panic over the Cryptococcus Gattii, it has been around for years and you also probably have not heard about this until recently. There is a reason for that; it is not worth getting anymore worked up about than each other thing out there that can kill you, like chocking on your morning cereal. This is an airborne virus but you are a lot more likely to be struck by lightning than to catch this virus. I don't learn about you, but I'll take my odds and not live in fear of the Cryptococcus Gattii.
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