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Scientists link autism with lack of gut bacteria

EnglishLatest News

Mice raised without bacteria in the gut showed distinctly autistic patterns of behaviour, choosing to interact with objects more than other mice, scientists at University College Cork (UCC) have found.

Scientists say the finding shows the essential role gut bacteria plays in the development of normal social behaviour and they point out that gut problems are common in people with autism, a disorder characterised by alterations in social behaviour.

Professor Ted Dinan, professor of psychiatry and a principal investigator in the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) at UCC, said they had been studying the influence of gut bacteria on the brain for years and they had already established that the serotonin system, which plays a role in regulating mood, “doesn’t develop properly if you don’t have enough bacteria in the gut”.


Author: Catherine Shanahan | Irish Examiner

German software firm SAP plans to hire hundreds with autism

EnglishLatest News

Firm hopes to expand pilot program to Ireland, U.S. and Canada later this year.

German software firm SAP says it wants to hire hundreds of people with autism to work as programmers and testers for its products.

In a statement Wednesday, the firm said it hopes the plan will boost the number of workers with autism to as much as one per cent of its 65,000 workforce by 2020.

Autism is a developmental disorder that can cause difficulties communicating in certain situations. It’s believed as much as one per cent of the world’s population has some sort of autism.


Author: CBC News

Home-based Sensory Exercises Can Benefit Autistic Kids

EnglishLatest News

New research suggests performing simple sensory exercises at home may improve the behaviors of children with autism.

The treatment, known as environmental enrichment, led to significant gains in behaviors among autistic boys between the ages of 3 and 12. Parents used everyday items such as scents, spoons and sponges to perform the sessions, said researchers from the University of California – Irvine.

Study co-authors Drs. Cynthia Woo and Michael Leon randomly assigned 28 boys to one of two groups, balanced for age and autism severity.


Author: Rick Nauert | PsychCentral

Autism not linked to Lyme disease

EnglishLatest News

There are many hypotheses of what causes autism. Many. Among those is that autism is caused by Lyme disease. Lyme disease is caused by infections of bacteria spread by ticks. A quick internet search brings up numerous sites discussing a supposed link between autism and lyme disease, with organizations, conventions and books devoted to the idea. For example, one book is titled The Lyme-Autism Connection: Unveiling the Shocking Link Between Lyme Disease and Childhood Developmental Disorders. Nine studies in pubmed come up on a search with terms autism and lyme.

A group calling itself “Lyme Induced Autism” claims that a large fraction of autistic children have active Lyme infection:

A subset a children on the autism spectrum also have active Borreliosis, we don’t know how large of a subset this is, we do know from informal studies that it is AT LEAST 20-30% which would be over 200,000 children in the United States alone.

Emphasis in the original.

So, one would expect that testing a large number of autistic children for antibodies against the bacteria would bring up AT LEAST 20-30% postives. But that isn’t the case. A recent study from the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that in a sample of 104 autistic children, none of them had antibodies. None. Not 20%. Not 2%. None.


Author: Matt Carey | LBRB

Housing needed for adults with autism

EnglishLatest News

As children with autism grow into adults, their parents strive to help them live as independently as possible. But housing to meet the needs of adults with autism is in short supply.

Brendan O’Reilly is home from school and tending to chores such as bringing back the empty trash can at his grandmother’s house in Carlyss. Brendan has autism and often sees things and hears things differently from most others. He likes to make people laugh.

“Google says that a 2-year-old ate raw bacon,” said Brendan, making conversation.


Author: Theresa Schmidt | 5 WNEM