zlacker

Wow, thats kind of mind blowing. If the cause has been as simple as fungus this entire time. Looking forward to seeing more research on this.

>>strang+(OP)
It's likely that there are many causes of autism. For example, there have been successful results of giving stool transplants to children with resolution of symptoms.

>>giarc+Q
Which also indicates a bacteria cause, no?

>>victor+l1
ASD is a set of symptoms. There’s likely many causes. If it were commonly caused by infections of the gut people would have noticed more prevalently as anti fungal and antibiotic treatments aren’t uncommon.

>>victor+l1
Yeah, probably related to gut microbiota.

>>fnordp+53
Not if you're missing microorganisms. In fact, antibiotics may damage your gut microbiota even further.

The above is just playing with an hypothesis, but there is evidence (unrelated to this case or autism) that gut microbiota is related to psychiatric/personality/mental disorders and stool transplants may help in those cases.

>>victor+l1
Yes, stool transplants attempt to reset the gut to a normal set of flora. The hypothesis is that something upset the flora in the gut of kids with ASD and resetting it resolves the symptoms. When I did research in the field, the thought at the time was that various Clostridia species may be the cause. They are known to produce toxins that can act on neurological cells (think Clostridum botulinum). The thought was these bacteria were more prevalent in kids, and their presence released toxins causing the symptoms. By resetting the gut and getting rid of these bacteria, the toxins disappeared and so did the symptoms. I haven't look at the literature in quite a while so things could have changed.