21–30 of 84 posts
Well it turns out that "Acetaminophen during bacterial colonization of the naïve gut is associated with lasting alterations in childhood microbiome composition": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9367926/
The more I come across articles like this (yes: I know it’s talking about early life) the more I start to wonder if the problems I’ve struggled with in the past and to a somewhat lesser extent now (anxiety, with quite severe physical symptoms) are caused by/can at least be alleviated by a change in gut flora. I have this weird feeling (based on some recurring experience) that anxiety and digestion are somehow deeply…
As someone from an autistic family, at least in our case it's definitely genetic.
I wonder how two identical twins with the same DNA might not both have autism. If it is environmental, having different gut flora seems more like an effect rather than a root cause since twin babies are usually given identical foods. I think it would be really ironic if the cure for autism was a vaccine though.
Yes, gut flora is definitely disrupted in people with ASD. But it's a real long stretch to suggest it's the cause.
The more I come across articles like this (yes: I know it’s talking about early life) the more I start to wonder if the problems I’ve struggled with in the past and to a somewhat lesser extent now (anxiety, with quite severe physical symptoms) are caused by/can at least be alleviated by a change in gut flora. I have this weird feeling (based on some recurring experience) that anxiety and digestion are somehow deeply…
The more I come across articles like this (yes: I know it’s talking about early life) the more I start to wonder if the problems I’ve struggled with in the past and to a somewhat lesser extent now (anxiety, with quite severe physical symptoms) are caused by/can at least be alleviated by a change in gut flora. I have this weird feeling (based on some recurring experience) that anxiety and digestion are somehow deeply…
Histamine intolerance is an interesting one.
The antibiotic link is really alarming. Growing up in a country where antibiotics are basically prescribed for any illness, my mom refused to administer it to us unless there was an emergency. Clearly she had some foresight. I find it a tough choice for my own kids. For example, if they have an ear infection, you could try waiting it out, and sometimes they can get better on their own, but it's riskier and might be l…
I've found this difficult as well, my mother always jumped right to antibiotics and it had some pretty clear long term consequences. My approach with my kids has been to use antibiotics only if there's no progression (better or worse). I figure as long as it appears the immune system is doing its job, that's enough for most cases. So far, we've given our 3-year antibiotics on two occasions. Once for an ear infection…
How could this possibly be true that there were clear long term consequences? How could you reasonably know if there were long term consequences from antibiotic use?
Which antibiotics cause what and how do you know they are the cause?
If there weren’t for the big pharma industrial complex and modern liberals’ unconditional support for big pharma, we would also be talking and studying more about vaccine induced autism.
> Infections during early childhood (birth to 5 years) significantly correlated with heightened risks of ADHD or ASD [...]
One plausible cause of such an association is pleiotropy: a genetic variant that influences one's risk for both infection and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Sadly, it is standard practice in the sciences to report "A is associated with B" using phrasings that the general public (and even many scientists) interpret to mean "A causes B". For example, this sentence from the abstract:
> The findings suggest links to immunodysregulation and metabolism, compounded by stress, early-life infection, and antibiotics.
Or this sentence from the results:
> Penicillin use between 1 and 2.5 years resulted in a 1.6-fold (1.2–2.1, 95% CI) higher likelihood of future ASD (p = 0.0030).
None of these are causal statements, but many people would read them as statements that one thing causes another. As much as I complain, though, I honestly don't know how much I can blame the scientific community for accepting "misleading" statements like this. Because it's also possible that regardless of what wording scientists settled on for expressing an association with no implication of causality, the general public would latch on to that phrase and read causality into it.
Edit: I also want to mention that there's absolutely nothing wrong with associative analyses, as long as you don't try to draw conclusions about causality from them.
Edit 2: Reading further into the results, they report a LOT of p-values and CIs with no adjustment for multiple testing, and many of those p-values are barely less than 0.05 and would definitely not be significant with proper multiple testing adjustment (i.e. many of them have a high likelihood of being false positives).
As someone from an autistic family, at least in our case it's definitely genetic.