First physiological test for autism proves high accuracy in second trial
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Having a clear test for autism is wonderful, but the spectrum is of infinite width and infinite height.
How do you know this, having not experienced neurotypical thinking?
Not saying you or OP are wrong, and I believe the non-neurotypical thing, but these topics are ones where nearly everyone who says they are on the spectrum appear to be 100% vehemently sure they are, but not 100% of those people are correct.
If this were true, everyone is diagnosable.
This could even have more dimensions to it, represented as 0-1 on each. If we're creating a diagnosis of a spectrum that directly affects function, does it not make sense for the general acceptance of normalcy to be represented as either all 1's or a number in-between? If being a savant gives someone greater individual knowledge, should this not be represented in a diagnosis of autism? Do they not instead become above that of normalcy by having this increased ability for specialized knowledge? This almost extends the idea of the spectrum into an extensive representation of a human's ability to function. With the idea of the spectrum being so wide, having a system to classify a human's ability to function over certain categories can aid in the ability to define normalcy and otherwise. The more pieces of information we have in this essentially matrix allows us to have a clear-cut understanding of what most people fall under. To limit this to 3-dimensional space helps as humans to visualize this, but to limit a tool to what we can visualize can hamper its ability.
(I am not a doctor)
First: a graph with two infinite dimensions doesn't have a top right point, it has a top right extent.
Second: when graphing, you don't get to pick what the normal is. That's a property of the graph. It is not the (impossible) property you've described.
I have two thoughts: a) this risks become a personality test, which are notoriously poor as a medical diagnosis tool, and b) I don’t think we (society) should be in a hurry to slap a medical diagnosis on everything.
I always upvote thoughtful responses even if I generally disagree with the overall theme.
As is typically the case, I’m probably wrong and will end up, over time, holding opinions opposed to my present collection, so I try not to stifle divergent opinions.
I absolutely appreciate the insight and comment. I had feared that the time I saw 120 twice in a row at a doctors visit, so I started measuring it at home.
This one uses machine learning and brain scans to predict the diagnoses for someone as young as 6 months old. It also predicts the severity.
What's also interesting is how it differentiate between people who are at-risk, but without a diagnoses, and those who are at-risk, and have a diagnoses.
I also wonder if there are more to be studied with the Broad Autism Phenotype (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746421/)
Autism, and all the other pseudo-mental disorders, have always had underlying physiological considerations. It is a mistake to treat people with these diagnoses as having a 'chronic' condition that can't be cured.
For example, cortisol deficiency has been associated with psychosis [0] since the 1950's [1], but the mental health industry has been treating this condition with awful palliative drugs since they were approved by the FDA (also in the 1950's).
Traditionally the diagnosis of autism has been based on an assessment of symptoms. It was assumed that the symptoms are related to the child having inherited "bad genes". There is no cure for "bad genes", so palliative therapy was thought appropriate. This study basically confirms that Autism has metabolic considerations, which can be addressed with appropriate interventions.
[0] https://psychcentral.com/news/2016/06/04/low-morning-cortiso...
[1] https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-fami...
I have friends on the spectrum. I happen to agree that mildly autistic behaviour is more akin to a personality difference than a disorder.
That said, I don't think it's fair to admonish someone for using the colloquial norm. The comment might read better if stated less as "careful, you're doing something wrong" and more in the tone of "here is another viewpoint you may find helpful and interesting."
And my son is not even a particularly extreme case. With lots of therapy and a little luck, he may be considered high-functioning someday. Other kids might be in diapers forever, never talk, and live in a group home their entire adult lives.
So I struggle to take seriously the high-functioning people who throw fits about what language we use to describe our situation. I've had people get mad at me for saying that I have a son with autism when I apparently should have said that I have an autistic son. I'm sorry, I'm too busy keeping my son alive to care!
It has become exhausting trying walk the ever shifting minefield of acceptable verbiage. I'm not sure how you would apply this to other situations. If you have a son with red hair should he be called your red headed son? That sounds more offensive right?
> I've had people get mad at me for saying that I have a son with autism when I apparently should have said that I have an autistic son.
I honestly can't remember which one of those I'm "supposed" to be. I could make a case against either: "person with autism" might sound like it's some outside affliction, "autistic person" might sound like the condition matters more than the person. But extreme concern over small details is a defining trait of autism, and I do it too on other subjects, so I suppose I can't be too judgmental...
The argument for "autistic person" or even "autist" is that it's not a health issue or disability.
"Disorder" and "special physiological difference" are synonyms.
A disorder is a condition that causes suffering.
My understanding is that it has to be disagreeable to the person who has it or put others at risk (in extreme instances).
So for example, someone with synesthesia might be considered disordered only if it prevents them from being happy or taking care of themselves, while many people with synesthesia seem to enjoy it.
I’m not sure where I stand wrt the position that autism is just a non-inferior neurovariant, but let’s not pretend we don’t understand the difference between asserting it’s a value-neutral variant and a disease.
Calling autism a disorder is an accurate paychiatric description, not a value judgement designed to insult a person's identity. An insult can be targeted at a person's autism, but not simply by describing it according to clinical terminology.
I sympathize with people who don't believe autism should be considered a disorder, but that doesn't mean discussion needs to be encumbered by walking on eggshells. In particular, admonishing someone for using established clinical terminology is unproductive.
For what it's worth, if you're arguing that "disorder" should not be used on the basis of precedents like "dumb" and "retarded", the page you cited is an exceptionally poor reference. The quotes appear to be mocking this phenomenon.
In a clinical context, yes. But there are probably close to zero clinicians in this thread.
One problem with the term "disorder" here is that quite often, it's applied to someone who has difficulty thriving under the many accommodations given to neurotypical people. If the autism spectrum was the norm, neurotypicals would have a similar disorder.
> Whether it will continue to be in the future is irrelevant for present conversation.
Not necessarily. It's perfectly possible for society to lead clinicians on issues like this, which is what seems to have happened with words like "society" and "dumb".
He doesn't have a great ability to write because he's severely autistic. You know, the disorder kind that makes it difficult to learn to read and write?
If you lack the capability to simulate the mental state of another human being based on observation, you're deficient in a key aspect of what we consider to be a normal functioning mind.
This is not a judgement on your character! Don't confuse the two. We don't think people with Down's or any other disorder are bad, or unworthy of a good life and plenty of opportunities to succeed.
But it is a disorder, especially for those who are much more profoundly impacted than yourself, and if it can be addressed with treatment or prevented entirely during pregnancy, it should be.
Even at her low end of the spectrum, it can cause a lot of distress and pain. I guess it just depends on a person's particular case and the circumstances of their life.
Autism Spectrum Disorder 299.00 (F84.0)
It doesn't mean you should reject the whole thing out of hand but it might be a good idea to try to figure out how much of it is todays bias rather than good science in cases where that is warranted.
The validation data are taken at baseline from three previously published studies investigating pharmaceutical interventions to normalize metabolic abnormalities of children with ASD31: (1) a combination of methylcobalamin and low dose folinic acid32, 33 (2) high dose folinic acid,34 and (3) sapropternin.35 Given that these studies all focused on evaluating treatment strategies for ASD, all participants had a confirmed diagnosis of ASD. FOCM/TS metabolites were available for 154 (76% male) participants with ASD with a mean age of 8.8 years (range 2–17 years). These ages are different than reported by Delhey et al.34 because this study only required that measurements be available at baseline, rather than both at baseline as well as the conclusion of the treatment phase. Furthermore, stratifying patients by age or gender did not reveal any differences in the univariate metabolite distributions. The first two studies were approved by the IRB at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the third study was approved by the IRB at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. All parents gave written, signed consent and patients provided assent when appropriate.
2.3 Metabolites
The metabolites under investigation are presented in Table 1 and additional details of these measurements and derivations are presented in Melnyk, et al.30 This is only a subset of the measurements investigated previously29 because “% DNA methylation” and “8‐OHG” were absent from the validation data set and were therefore removed from this study to ensure that a consistent set of metabolites are used for training and testing.
(Table 1 - 22 metabolic variables considered)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/btm2.10095
I’m curious if these metabolic abnormalities apply to adults as well. I had an ADOS at the UCD MIND Institute come back with a 7 (1-14 scale IIRC) about 10 years ago.
PS: PKU treatment sapropterin (Kuvan) costs $100k USD/yr
Another issue could be overfitting.
Because those approaches are considered to be fairly low-risk, I suspect research will continue in those directions until they hit a wall of some kind.
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/oxytocin-spray-boosts-soci...
Hopefully that serves as a jumping off point.
It allows people to read faces and emotional context in a way they couldn't before. Some people find that their decision-making becomes less logical and more emotional. For others, nothing changes.
If you search "tms autism" there are other firsthand accounts that you might find interesting.
https://www.autismspeaks.org/blog/2016/03/25/transcranial-ma...
If you want to remove your autism today, you can try transcranial magnetic stimulation.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sister-the-edge-auti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulat...
As a parent of kid with Autism I experienced it first hand. However, instead of doing like many parents (including those with neurotypicals) we did not cave-in, but build a lot of incentive and rewards and it paid off very early. But this is my n=1, so I don't know if it is because of our parenting style or something else.
Did you have a source for all this or did you work it out by yourself?
> “We are able to predict with 88 percent accuracy whether children have autism,” said Juergen Hahn, lead author
> It is estimated that approximately 1.7 percent of all children are diagnosed with ASD
def has_autism(child):
return False
The full paper is here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/btm2.10095
~4.9% incorrectly diagnosed with autism (0.05 x .983)
~1.5% correctly diagnosed with autism (0.88 x 0.017)
Thus, 76% of those diagnosed would be diagnosed incorrectly.
It's unclear if those who have the odd brain structure but aren't diagnosed are entirely asymptomatic.
Also they may be non-autistic in spite of this brain pattern, but nonetheless have a genetic predisposition to pass it on. Big step.
As more is known about the condition, the diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM could be updated, which would mean that this test would then need to be evaluated again. But that doesn't prevent its current accuracy being measured.