Apr 16, 2022 09:52 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 16, 2022 10:29 PM by C C.)
These vitamins in excess may triple autism risk during pregnancy
https://www.spring.org.uk/2022/04/vitamin-aut.php
INTRO: Mothers who have elevated blood levels of vitamin B12 (cobalamin) or B9 (folate) during pregnancy are more likely to have autistic children. Folic acid is a B vitamin and synthetic form of folate used in nutritional supplements, breads and fortified foods.
Dark green leafy vegetables are high in folate while vitamin B12 is naturally present in foods from animal sources such as meat, dairy, and eggs.
Folate and B12 are important for the foetus to develop as a deficiency in pregnant mums would put her future child at a greater risk of anaemia and neural tube defects such as spina bifida.
However, high levels of folate (four times higher than the normal range) during pregnancy could triple the risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in new born babies, a study has found.
Similarly, excessive amounts of vitamin B12 in mums triples the risk of ASD for their new babies.
The risk of developing ASD can rise by 17.6 times if both B12 and folate levels are very high... (MORE - details)
STUDY: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppe.12414
Why autism therapies have an evidence problem
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opini...blem-69916
INTRO: Andrew Whitehouse never expected his work as an autism researcher to put him in danger. But that’s exactly what happened soon after he and his colleagues reported in 2020 that few autism interventions used in the clinic are backed by solid evidence.
Within weeks, a range of clinicians, therapy providers and professional organizations had threatened to sue Whitehouse or had issued complaints about him to his employer. Some harassed his family, too, putting their safety at risk, he says.
For Whitehouse, professor of autism research at the Telethon Kids Institute and the University of Western Australia in Perth, the experience came as a shock. “It’s so absurd that just a true and faithful reading of science leads to this,” he says. “It’s an untold story.”
In fact, Whitehouse’s findings were not outliers. Another 2020 study—the Autism Intervention Meta-Analysis, or Project AIM for short—plus a string of reviews over the past decade also highlight the lack of evidence for most forms of autism therapy. Yet clinical guidelines and funding organizations have continued to emphasize the efficacy of practices such as applied behavior analysis (ABA). And early intervention remains a near-universal recommendation for autistic children at diagnosis.
The field urgently needs to reassess those claims and guidelines, says Kristen Bottema-Beutel, associate professor of special education at Boston College in Massachusetts, who worked on Project AIM. “We need to understand that our threshold of evidence for declaring something evidence-based is rock-bottom low,” she says. “It is very unlikely that those practices actually produce the changes that we’re telling people they do.”
How this dearth of high-quality data on autism intervention has persisted despite decades of dedicated research is murky. Part of the problem may be that autism researchers can’t seem to agree on what threshold of evidence is sufficient to say a therapy works. A system of entrenched conflicts of interest has also artificially kept this bar low, experts say.
In the meantime, clinicians have to make daily decisions to try to support autistic children and their families, says Brian Boyd, professor of applied behavioral science at the University of Kansas, who studies classroom-based interventions. “They can’t always wait for science to catch up.”
But clinicians also have an ethical responsibility to consider the safety and costs of interventions, Whitehouse says... (MORE - details)
https://www.spring.org.uk/2022/04/vitamin-aut.php
INTRO: Mothers who have elevated blood levels of vitamin B12 (cobalamin) or B9 (folate) during pregnancy are more likely to have autistic children. Folic acid is a B vitamin and synthetic form of folate used in nutritional supplements, breads and fortified foods.
Dark green leafy vegetables are high in folate while vitamin B12 is naturally present in foods from animal sources such as meat, dairy, and eggs.
Folate and B12 are important for the foetus to develop as a deficiency in pregnant mums would put her future child at a greater risk of anaemia and neural tube defects such as spina bifida.
However, high levels of folate (four times higher than the normal range) during pregnancy could triple the risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in new born babies, a study has found.
Similarly, excessive amounts of vitamin B12 in mums triples the risk of ASD for their new babies.
The risk of developing ASD can rise by 17.6 times if both B12 and folate levels are very high... (MORE - details)
STUDY: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppe.12414
Why autism therapies have an evidence problem
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opini...blem-69916
INTRO: Andrew Whitehouse never expected his work as an autism researcher to put him in danger. But that’s exactly what happened soon after he and his colleagues reported in 2020 that few autism interventions used in the clinic are backed by solid evidence.
Within weeks, a range of clinicians, therapy providers and professional organizations had threatened to sue Whitehouse or had issued complaints about him to his employer. Some harassed his family, too, putting their safety at risk, he says.
For Whitehouse, professor of autism research at the Telethon Kids Institute and the University of Western Australia in Perth, the experience came as a shock. “It’s so absurd that just a true and faithful reading of science leads to this,” he says. “It’s an untold story.”
In fact, Whitehouse’s findings were not outliers. Another 2020 study—the Autism Intervention Meta-Analysis, or Project AIM for short—plus a string of reviews over the past decade also highlight the lack of evidence for most forms of autism therapy. Yet clinical guidelines and funding organizations have continued to emphasize the efficacy of practices such as applied behavior analysis (ABA). And early intervention remains a near-universal recommendation for autistic children at diagnosis.
The field urgently needs to reassess those claims and guidelines, says Kristen Bottema-Beutel, associate professor of special education at Boston College in Massachusetts, who worked on Project AIM. “We need to understand that our threshold of evidence for declaring something evidence-based is rock-bottom low,” she says. “It is very unlikely that those practices actually produce the changes that we’re telling people they do.”
How this dearth of high-quality data on autism intervention has persisted despite decades of dedicated research is murky. Part of the problem may be that autism researchers can’t seem to agree on what threshold of evidence is sufficient to say a therapy works. A system of entrenched conflicts of interest has also artificially kept this bar low, experts say.
In the meantime, clinicians have to make daily decisions to try to support autistic children and their families, says Brian Boyd, professor of applied behavioral science at the University of Kansas, who studies classroom-based interventions. “They can’t always wait for science to catch up.”
But clinicians also have an ethical responsibility to consider the safety and costs of interventions, Whitehouse says... (MORE - details)