Another HDAC inhibitor that works against autism and is easy to obtain by eating broccoli sprouts is sulforaphane: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672987/
IMO we need clear clinical definitions of different parts of the spectrum so we can have more intelligent conversations about it - is a study cohort involving 10 year olds ones who cannot clothe themselves or participate in regular school activities, or ones which have some social reading deficits but can still participate? Its always very difficult to tell.
The partitions would make sense if each partition corresponded to a specific physical 'defect'. Such that it actually makes sense to treat everyone in that partition the same. This is why we distinguish diabetes Type 1 from diabetes type 2. This is why we distinguish between the flu and tuberculosis.
But if autism is indeed a spectrum, and people are spread quite evenly over the spectrum, the partitioning stops making sense. Quite dangerously, it suggests that all people in that partition have 'the same problem', thus research and treatment would treat that partition as the same. If this is not the underlying reality this really hinders effective treatment.
Consider how effective general medicine would be if we considered fever to be a spectrum, and treated based on what interval someones temperature fell in. That would be a disaster. Expanding such a system by including more variables (how sweaty is the patient, do they shiver) or by controlling for more confounding variables (compensating for the circadian rhythm) does not help either.
So if it is possible to cure several with the same cure, then I'd disagree with saying there's over 200 different "fundamental" types of cancer.
But cells from different specialized tissues tend to become cancerous in different ways, by expressing different genes. So a treatment that targets a particular gene expression may work for one type but not others.
And a cancer that returns after treatment will have yet a different gene expression (usually resistant to that particular treatment).
Like the Borg, cancer adapts. That's why it's called the Emperor of all maladies: http://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/
At the moment there is little way to tell or reference whether a studied cohort happens to be on one end of the spectrum or the other, or mixed between. I'm mostly advocating on behalf of adults and parents of those on the higher functioning end of the spectrum (because I'm a part of that group), who not only have to deal with a general lack of good age-specific information, but ALSO a huge amount of false-positive data. Most support groups for example are for caretakers of those on the lower end of the spectrum. As a result, those who could use data on their side of the spectrum to help themselves, or advocate for their own care almost always have to deal with wrong or misleading information.
Imagine you had an incurable illness that was moderately debilitating to you, but in harsher cases would paralyze the victims. If you or your doctor wanted to look up how to treat your symptoms, you would only get tips on how to operate paraplegic bathrooms and support groups for caretakers. You try going to a support group with victims of the illness, but find them to be in a vastly more difficult position than you. Yet you still suffer. Its a feeling of loneliness that is really hard to express.
Unlike in medicine, when you can often classify problems by their pinpointed sources (e.g. a virus/bacteria), in psychiatry it's usually a set of genes and other factors that comes into play, and various subsystems that broke down giving a certain outcome.
We group psychiatric disorders the way we do it, because the science for distinguishing the sources of disorders isn't good enough yet to have a better system.
It's similar to the taxonomy of plant&animal species before the advent of genetics. We had to group them by the way they looked, not by their real relationships.
Well, being able to take a child who is severely autistic with no chance of independent life and moving them to a self-sufficient, if slightly odd, adult is probably more useful to society than helping adults or children who already can function acceptably, more or less.
In addition, I don't always like the whole "autism spectrum" because it's a symptom-based classification that, much like cancer, we're almost certainly going to learn is actually multiple independent diseases.