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Urine Test For Autism
An anonymous reader writes "Defining and diagnosing autism has been a controversial process — but may be a little less so now. Children with autism have a different chemical fingerprint in their urine than non-autistic children, according to new research. The difference stems from a previously documented difference in gut bacteria found in autistic individuals. The possibility of a simple pee test matters because currently, children are assessed for autism through a lengthy testing process that explores a child's social interaction, communication, and imaginative skills. Being able to identify the condition earlier and at a lower cost could leave more time and money for treatment."
3 fluid ounces, definitely 3 fluid ounces.
liqbase
There's quite a difference between geekery and a crippling condition such as this.
I hate sigs.
So you want to just ignore the condition? Where do you draw the line there? Wanna not tell someone they're dying of lung cancer because you're afraid they're going to get depressed and act like a dying cancer patient?
Get real. People get stuck with all kinds of shitty things, it's their own choice to overcome their problems or not. You can't assume the lowest common denominator is normal and scapegoat labeling for peoples' inability to cope.
Autism isn't a label, it's a condition. The western mentality to diagnose and treat conditions is why humans' life expectancies have increased.
Stop regurgitating shit you hear from bad late night comics and ignorant rednecks.
Large part of being an engineer is an ability to interact with people effectively.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Maybe these kids just aren't eating what other kids are eating.
Sadly even my university access doesnt extend to the Journal of Proteome Research without me stumping up $30 for two days of access, so I can't check the statistics. They had a sample of 39 (35M + 4F) autistic children, their 28 siblings (14M+14F), and 34 age-matched controls (17F+17M). Don't know why they didnt age- and sex-match the controls.
Pretty small sample, and if you look for enough different proteins in urine you might well find something different.
NEEDS MOAR DATA! And an open access journal!
Clearly they simply test the urine to look for vaccines...
We all know about correlation and causation!
I can't see this being of any benefit in the long term. The problem is, even if they -have- autism or other defects, labeling them will do nothing to have them overcome it and will lead the majority of them to make excuses to why they aren't productive members of society.
I really don't understand the western mentality of labeling everyone to try to "help". Which is going to make people want to get ahead in life? Being told "hey you have -insert mental disability here-" or "hey, your not doing to great in -insert school subject here-". One has people making excuses and the other just has them either not focus on that and focus on what they are good at or try harder.
Autism is a physical, biological disorder. It is a disease, not a mood. It isn't like you'll suddenly stop being autistic because you forgot you had it.
Early diagnosis gives you more time for treatment, which will actually help people become more functional individuals.
Are you suggesting that we shouldn't perform mammograms or colonoscopy because you don't actually have any ill effects from the cancer until after you've been labelled?
By that logic, we should just stop running tests all-together, because we'd all be far healthier if we didn't have any labels.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Geek and engineer are not synonymous.
I can't see this being of any benefit in the long term. The problem is, even if they -have- autism or other defects, labeling them will do nothing to have them overcome it and will lead the majority of them to make excuses to why they aren't productive members of society. I really don't understand the western mentality of labeling everyone to try to "help". Which is going to make people want to get ahead in life? Being told "hey you have -insert mental disability here-" or "hey, your not doing to great in -insert school subject here-". One has people making excuses and the other just has them either not focus on that and focus on what they are good at or try harder.
Are you serious? The sooner you get a diagnosis, the more therapy and assistance you can provide, which leads to greater success as the child gets older. Speech delays, learning disabilities...they don't have to be show stoppers. How much harder is it when parents struggle for years without knowing what's going on? How much harder is it for the kid when everyone just thinks s/he's dumb or lazy, not realizing there's an actual underlying condition? When you know what that condition is, you know how to approach it and offer help. It's not just a matter of applying a label and being done with it...it's understanding that the child has a neurological condition and finding ways to work with and around it.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Sir, we've got your urine test results, and it turns out that... ...urine sane!
At the least, such tests can weed out people who in fact -don't have- autism.
One that hath name thou can not otter
First, the earlier doctors can identify it, the more likely it is that scientists will be able to identify the very first expression of whatever gene causes it, and thus eventually prevent that change in others. They might even find that there's some underlying environmental cause that triggers said gene expression, in which case it could be eliminated entirely through early enough testing and treatment. Either way, identifying it early enough is key to being able to find the root cause.
Second, the earlier autism is identified in a kid, the more likely that behavioral therapy will produce a more functional adult.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Managers are people with a high level scope of the company, and may be engineers, but typically are not. Steve Jobs and Ballmer are first entrepreneurs and business people with vision and high level understanding of managing people, and then engineers.
A great engineer HAS social skills, they can communicate problems with management, work well in a team, they accept criticism and project changes without taking it personally, they make connections so that they can get things done.
A poor engineer might be able to make a few breakthroughs or calculations, but the real world isn't Hollywood where companies rely engineer supergenius nerd charicatures that prove their worth in the technical side.
There are great technical engineers and there are engineers with great social skills, and great technical engineers with social skills are far more needed than great technical engineers that do not fit well with the rest of the company. If they can fix the inability to grow socially, then companies get more of what they need.
not all autism is crippling. It can have a fairly broad spectrum, and the argument the OP seems to be trying to make is that quite a lot of the geeks and nerds in the world are a high functioning form of autism. I wouldn't guess as to percentage, but having worked in a disabilities service office at a university for 4 years, the sciences have a disproportionate share of the autism types, whereas the arts tend to cope better with ADHD types and so on.
Granted, a lot of this is self fulfilling. People with aspergers get into positions in universities and schools and build a nurturing environment for other people with aspergers. I live in ontario, and we are in the process of implementing new laws called the Accessibility for Ontarians with disabilities acts (AODA). At my particular institution the arts have been all over trying to get compliance, and be more accessible, whereas the science departments figure they've been accessible enough (and to a large degree are correct), and that the training is a waste of time. The implicit undercurrent is that the science departments already are accessible, because otherwise there wouldn't be any domestic scientists.
There is a lot to be said for treating even the mild cases though. Anger management is a major issue for a lot of people with autism, and they risk taking it out on subordinates in a fashion that to the rest of us is utterly irrational, equally a lack of social skills can limit their access to useful employment, and while they tend to need a different sort of office from the more socially amenable types, they can be remarkably productive, if they can get a job. It's also useful to know in advance the sorts of things you need to watch out for as a parent or in my case as a guy who fixed printers in an office full of students with some sorts of disability - people with autism will have odd movement behaviours which can be both distracting and disruptive, as well as have anger outburts if the printer doesn't work right away. In my experience they aren't good at personal responsibility either(you pushed the wrong button, it doesn't matter what you think the button should have done, that's not what it does, and getting mad at me over it doesn't teach you how to push the correct one next time type problems), but that is not part of any official diagnosis.
We already have Ritalin (or alcohol) for that. Most of the really good engineers (of many stripes) I know are functionally autistic, ADD/ADDHD or high-functioning alcoholics.
Just to clarify... Ritalin=stimulant. Alcohol=depressant. They don't do the same kinds of things.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Asperger's? No problem.
Non-verbal autism? They aren't able to interact with the rest of the world.
Validation comes when they take a bunch of blind samples in another set of test subjects and, using this test, try to determine whether the subjects are autistic -- without knowing in advance. If, and only if, that kind of test turns up positive, will it even be worth further study.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Good thing proper sanitation came about because of advances in medicine, then.
You clearly don't have or know anyone with an actual mental disorder. There is certainly harm done by false diagnosis/labeling, and some people certainly milk their diagnoses, but the majority of people with mental disorders find it somewhat of a relief when they discover that they have a condition that 1) is not their fault and 2) has treatment options.
Think of it this way - if you grew up, and throughout your elementary and even high school experience, you had skills and abilities that other people thought were bizarre, people always looked at you weird and you didn't know why, you had uncontrollable tics that other people just didn't, you were frustrated daily because you had a very difficult time controlling your own behaviors, and you constantly got in trouble because these behaviors were judged to be "bad."
Finding out "other people have this problem too, and here's what you can try to alleviate the symptoms" is important to help these people become "normal, productive members of society." Your assertion that diagnosis will "lead the majority of them to make excuses" is completely unfounded.
Which just goes to show you how useless those little boxes are.
Sure, Ritalin is a stimulant, if you don't have ADHD. But if you do have ADHD, Ritalin acts more like a depressant. That's one of the differentiators between true ADHD and normal hyperactivity.
And yes, alcohol is technically a depressant, but unless you're living in a cave you know that alcohol can have effects that are very similar to those of stimulants.
First off, there are plenty of parents who do "treat" autism with shit like Lupron and chelation. It doesn't work, but it's still hell for the victims.
Secondly, a test gets us closer to a root cause and thus less credibility for the "vaccines cause autism" idiots like Andrew Wankfield and Jenny McCarthy -- who have managed to run vaccination rates down enough that measles and mumps are once again endemic in the UK and we're getting large outbreaks in the USA.
Finally, please understand that "geekishness" is at the very shallow end of the autistic spectrum -- at the other end, it's pretty much crippling.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
How is not drinking disease contaminated water not based on medical science?
Also, right now, ASD clumps together symptoms even though they may have different etiologies. Having a biological test for a trait correlated with autism may help tease out the degree to which different conditions result in the same symptoms. When children test negative, but still exhibit ASD, we know there is another pathway to the condition that may be better served through different treatment.
This could be HUGE.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Maybe these kids just aren't eating what other kids are eating.
Exactly what I was thinking, it is well known that autistic persons tend to be notoriously picky about their diet. This is one of the main explanations for the findings of abnormal gut flora (and the contentious alternative that the casual link goes the other direction).
Which is not to say that the casual link between bacteria and autism necessarily only flows one way, it could be both. For instance, consider a hypothetical "basic autism" -> very picky eating -> abnormal gut flora -> additional problems that get lumped in with "autism symptoms". What I'm curious to know if anyone's tried a "Fecal Transplant" to normalize an autistic person's gut bacteria.
Look harder: The story is about a test that can identify autism based on urine, because autistic kids have different bacteria in their gut than non-autistic kids. The link is to a summary of the retraction of the entire theory that autistic kids have different bacteria in the gut than non-autistic kids; the scientist who submitted that paper fabricated his results (as the link states).
Again, as mentioned upthread, this has nothing to do with a MEASURABLE difference in gut flora.
You are confusing two totally different stories.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
That refers specifically to the link to vaccines, and Wakefield faked the intestinal data in his subjects, but there are still others who think that there is something to the gut symptom correlation.
Erikson et al (2005) http://www.springerlink.com/content/l13786n2151314t6/ looked at all the evidence and found lots of people looking at it, but the stuff that was published has a wide range in the level of scientific rigor.
If there is a correlation (and there really might be one), it's a whole lot more complicated than a simple cause-effect one.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
But Wakefield has NOTHING at all to do with the fact that there is measurable differences in gut Flora.
Nobody, certainly not the story linked, or Lancet, challenges that finding.
The only part discredited is that vaccines caused the gut infections.
Two TOTALLY different findings, totally unrelated except for the word Autism, which cause the short attention span crowd to assume its the same thing.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Autistic kids don't eat like the other kids. The other kids are normal, the autistic one needs to get the same old special stuff or they will not eat anything and become malnourished. We have 1 in the family. I think the study would need to feed the controls the same stuff as the autistic kids their are pair up with; I'm also curious if gender pairing matters at this age.
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Nope, you're wrong. Alcohol is a depressant. Just because you may "feel stimulated" because of the effect it is having on your brain does not mean that your body is actually treating it like a stimulant, it is just targeting your inhibitions so you "feel more stimulated". Anything that depresses areas of the brain is a depressant.
It isn't like you'll suddenly stop being autistic because you forgot you had it.
As someone with Asperger's, my experience has shown it to be much the opposite.
I have developed certain behaviours when it comes to dealing with people, but they still require me to be conscious of the situation. As soon as I stop doing so, I usually slip back into my old behaviours.
My nephew was cured after being diagnosed with autism...
Then he never had autism to begin with.
If autism is a spectrum, then it indicates that there are a number of factors that determine "how autistic" someone is, and we don't know how many of those factors correlate to the test above. What if the test above only correlates to one of the unknown factors of autism? It could do more harm than good to label some kids as autistic, even if they had only one of those genes or environmental causes, or another kid as not autistic because he has all of the factors that would put him firmly in the non-verbal camp, but the one that is tested for?
You have to be really, really careful with correlations like this.
If the condition does have benefits, then is treatment the right approach? The typical goal of treatment is to "reduce you to normal," presumably so you don't bother other people. But from the society point of view, that's very counterproductive. Society at large will benefit from more geniuses.It would probably benefit even more if we learned to accomodate them!
i 'll have you know that those repetitive motions you were talking about are critically important in many thought processes that usually lead to the next physics theory, or a new method of data storage.
RIP TRICERATOPS, YOU NEVER EXISTED
Because government funded information belongs to the people (sorry, I'm too lazy to format it): Introduction Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) represent a series of related highly complex socio-psychological and neurodevelopmental problems with associated metabolic and gastrointestinal abnormalities of poorly defined etiology. ASD typically develop during the first 3 years of life and are characterized by a myriad of deficits in language/communication skills, social detachment as well as repetitive and stereotypic behaviors.(1, 2) The etiopathology of ASD is multifactorial and has been linked to genetic abnormalities(3, 4) and inborn errors of metabolism but there are many postulated, largely ill-defined, triggers including infectious agents and environmental toxins.(5) Autism has been shown to have strong associations with various metabolic abnormalities, immunological function and gastrointestinal disturbances, although their mechanistic significance is unknown.(5-8) In addition to the panel of neurodevelopmental problems associated with ASD, a range of gastrointestinal disorders have been reported, and recent studies have found that the condition is associated with abnormal gut microbiota.(9) There is also the possibility of previously unrecognized etiologic connections between microbiome disorder and childhood developmental problems, given the importance of the microbiome in mammalian metabolism, for example, bile acid metabolism.(10) Individuals with ASD are commonly exposed to repeated courses of multiple antibiotic therapies and this may contribute to the complex relationships between gastrointestinal dysbiosis and ASD by altering the composition or stability of their microbiota.(11-13) Abnormal sulfur metabolism has also been shown to typify individuals with ASD.(14) Waring et al. showed that individuals with autism have lower levels of plasma sulfate but considerably elevated levels of urinary sulfate, as compared to non-autistic individuals. These data suggest that autistic individuals may have impaired detoxification potential involving sulfation, as evidenced by their inability to sulfate the widely used drug acetaminophen.(14) The prevalence of autism has increased from 4 in 10000 children before 1980(2, 15) to 99 in 10000 in 2009 in the United Kingdom(15) and 53 in 10000 in 2006 in the United States(16) alone, but this varies regionally and with ethnicity, and also some geographically localized areas have much higher incidences of ASD.(17) However, it is not clear whether the global increase is due to higher prevalence of the disorder, and/or improved early detection/diagnosis. Current diagnosis of ASD is subjective and depends on observations of a cluster of behaviors and fulfillment of multiple criteria set out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition (DSM-IV-TR)(18) by a trained clinician. At present, there are no reliable biochemical- or genetic-screening tests for the disorder, and in some cases, particularly in late onset autism, childhood development can switch from being normal to showing a delay in acquisition of new skills, thus adding to the difficulty for diagnosing ASD. Thus, there is a pressing need for new diagnostic tools for ASD that are both sensitive and reliable, since early diagnosis can lead to timely interventions and optimized clinical management. Metabonomic approaches offer the possibility of measuring metabolic end points (metabolic profiles) that are determined by genetic and environmental factors.(19, 20) The application of high throughput metabolic profiling methods using high resolution analytical platforms (nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and/or mass spectrometry (MS)) with subsequent multivariate statistical analyses now provides a well-established strategy for differential metabolic pathway profiling and disease diagnosis.(10, 20-22) Here we apply a metabolic profiling approach to capture the global biochemical signature of autistic individuals using NMR spectroscopy with multivariate statistical modeling to characterize indiv
As someone with bipolar disorder all I can say to you is "fuck you".
Diagnosis and treatment has allowed me to become a fully-functioning member of society rather than a burden on society and everyone around me. Absent medication and psychotherapy, I'm at the mercy of horrible mood swings and psychosis. My parents listened to a quack of a child psychologist who felt that diagnosing and "labelling" a 10-year old was more damaging than any disorder that might be present. The result of that was a slow decline into madness, and as an adult, I was too sick to seek treatment on my own, and not sick enough for involuntary commitment. I was finally diagnosed at 41 years old as a result of some circumstances that I don't care to share with someone like you. Do you have any idea what it's like to lose half your life to untreated mental illness?
Treatment probably saved my life - and there is no treatment without diagnosis and as you put it, "labelling". The suicide rates for persons with bipolar disorder are truly staggering - and those who don't take their own lives frequently have abbreviated lives due to irrational choices made as a result of the disorder.
"Trying harder" hardly factors into it when you're at the mercy of a very real and debilitating disorder.
Try a little empathy, fuckwit.
About one out of every three people who contract measles die.
That's actually a low estimate... it turns out that three out of every three people who contract measles die.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Ah, good old Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome.