Autism symptoms reduced nearly 50 percent two years after fecal transplant

sciencedaily.com

23 points·cromulent··7 comments

A completely open study. The parents, students and evaluators knew people were getting the actual treatment. No control group and no blinding at all

The study authors themselves acknowledge the placebo effect although they naturally minimized the effect on the results.

Another miracle to "cure" autism from a completely useless study. It is also not considering any additional support the children got in that two years.

50% reduction, even if placebo, is really good! Is there a better placebo on the market currently?

If a placebo works as well as the trial treatment then you can conclude the trial treatment is ineffective. You can't conclude anything about the placebo. The definition of a placebo is a substance or treatment with no medical action.

Well you could also conclude that you picked the wrong placebo since perhaps it's not an ineffective substance or treatment. This is the issue with acupuncture studies - turns out placebo treatments actually have an effect so you can't use the results of those studies in any substantive way.

This autism could be working the same way - just the fact that someone is caring about your child can cause a ripple effect that improves the child's behavior or influences the parents and/or evaluators evaluation of the child's behavior.

>He discovered that three months of daily FMT was required to treat his autism patients,

That's quite the catch

Getting something shoved up your butt every day until expected results emerge, resulting in you behaving the way they want you to.

Sounds like false admissions through water boarding, or gay conversion therapy to me.

That gut brain axis is going to usher in a new wave of treatments for mental health issues we can’t even imagine yet.

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