New article from the Sacramento Bee in California announces a new Autism study to be conducted by the University of California at Davis to focus on the environment and the effects it may have on children with Autism. Study will track babies from before birth by tracking the environmental aspects surrounding the mother and then follow up once the baby is born until about age 3.
This is a step in the right direction to finally get answers to the increased numbers of Autistic Children in the U.S. today. Right now the best autism therapies are based on suspected environmental causes and include: casein-free diets, supplements, and oral chelation. Hopefully at the end of this study scientists will find a cause and eventually a cure to this now common condition in our children. See full article below:
“Researchers have long suspected that autism’s causes are rooted in one’s genes, combined with some kind of a hit from the environment. But pinpointing the interplay of these factors has been daunting, in part because the probing tends to come after a child is diagnosed.
A new study at the University of California at Davis will examine potential clues pointing to the neurodevelopmental disorder before it occurs – prior to birth and during a baby’s earliest years.
“We are quite concerned about the role that environment might play in autism,” said Nigel Fields, a scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one of two federal agencies to fund the $7.5 million research. “We would like to understand the complex interaction of genes and environmental factors as early in the developmental process as possible.”
Autistic children often have trouble talking, exhibit repetitive behaviors and are unable to connect with other people.
Researchers in the new study will look at the mother before, during and after pregnancy, and at the baby throughout its first three years.
The goal is to learn how to identify children most susceptible to environmental exposures that may lead to autism.
The project, known as MARBLES for Markers of Autism Risk in Babies – Learning Early Signs, is the first of its kind to look in real time at environmental exposures. They could include a mother’s infections during pregnancy, an infant’s childhood vaccinations, and other potential contaminants such as mercury, flame retardants and common, chlorinated chemicals such as those found in pesticides.
MARBLES is an extension of another project under way examining the influence of genes and environmental factors in more than 800 families in which a child is already diagnosed with the disorder.
That study, called CHARGE, Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment, already has found that autistic children’s immune systems respond differently to certain substances than do those of children who do not have autism, leading experts to suspect that autism is an immune function disorder as well as a neurological disorder.
“But if you really want to get at causes, it’s crucial to go back in time,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a UC Davis environmental epidemiologist and one of the project’s principal investigators.
MARBLES will enroll more than 200 pregnant women who already have had at least one child diagnosed with autism, since mothers of autistic children are at least 10 times more likely to have another child with the disorder.
Researchers will comb their homes for potential environmental poisons – gathering the contents of vacuum cleaners, carpet dust and samples of air. They will conduct extensive interviews with the mothers about their exposures to everything from nail polish products to mercury-tainted fish. They will collect blood, and immediately after the baby’s birth, placental tissue, umbilical cord blood, as well as mother’s breast milk and urine from both mom and baby.”
By Dorsey Griffith
Sacramento Bee
published 8/10/2007