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Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

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Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#151

I think this is the clinical trial registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03408886?tab=results It is marked as having results submitted but quality review has not been completed. N=60 and a placebo group, which is better than the N=18 and no placebo group of the first study. There have been so many small scale trials showing amazing autism improvements that failed to replicate in larger, better controlled…

Study completed in 2022, but still no results posted or study published.

I've never really thought about this but, could it be because they don't want people to "try this at home"? Either because of safety issues, or my actual hypothesis, because they want to keep their possible pool of candidates as big as possible?

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I got bad chronic constipation after four years as a strict carnivore. 2 questions: 1) Did your constipation start right after you did strict carnivore? Or was it after 4 years? 2) List all foods that you ate on strict carnivore. (Include salt, water etc. I presume it won't be a long list)

1) I had constipation on a very high fiber diet before starting carnivore. That was fixed in literally one day. It was the most dramatic change. Then it gradually came back after about 3.5 years. 2) beef, butter, chicken, pork, lamb, eggs, bacon, for > 95%. I do indulge in some processed meats with seasonings. Salt is the only seasoning I add, so I've become a salt snob and get the premium stuff. After that unspicy d…

Thanks.

Regarding full strength kimchi - did you make it yourself or did you buy it? If you bought it, what brand?

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#154
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! My son who has autism would eat anything we put in front of him until age 3, when his weight, appetite and health suddenly and alarmingly crashed. Ever since that episode, he's had a much more restrictive diet and food preferences. Night and day. They never successfully identified what happened. Just diagnosed it generally as failure to thrive.

There’s some research on sudden onset autism being treated with antifungals; so at least sometimes a sudden change may be the result of something very specific in the gut.

There is not reasonable evidence supporting the idea that autism can be treated with antifungals.

Case reports are unreliable due to placebo effect.

The antifungal myth has been tested by too many well-meaning parents with no results.

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#155
Being told to eat shit has been typical of most of my experience of trying to get normies to understand my mild nuerodiversity.

My slightly more serious experience is that in my late 20s I started getting digestive problems and gaining weight. I feel like my neurodiversity got worse, but that could easily be that environmental factors exposed it.

How does one take advantage of a study like this? I would be difficult to get medically sanctioned poo right now. So what can I do? Coprophilia seems high risk.

I mean I can eat Kimchi and oats, but that seems more about encouraging the bugs that are already there than replacing missing bugs. Are we close to over the counter poo pills?

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#156

Being told to eat shit has been typical of most of my experience of trying to get normies to understand my mild nuerodiversity. My slightly more serious experience is that in my late 20s I started getting digestive problems and gaining weight. I feel like my neurodiversity got worse, but that could easily be that environmental factors exposed it. How does one take advantage of a study like this? I would be difficult…

Aren't probiotics essentially gut bacteria? Is the problem that they aren't the right gut bacteria, or that they get released at the wrong stage of the digestive pipeline? If it's the latter, is it just a matter of making the capsule release at the right point?

Or is the problem that there are different sets of issues, and finding the right mix of bacteria to fix the issue is difficult?

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#157
post #148

> Prior to the study, 83% of participants had "severe" autism. Two years later, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% as mild or moderate, and incredibly, 44% were below the cut-off for mild ASD. Pretty incredible if true!

I think the terminology of "incredible" is the operative word but I agree, if it could help, great. But I'm very skeptical. I find it hard to think that your gut biome can affect your brain so much that you struggle with social queues but are able to have an amazing memory. But then I've met people not on "the spectrum" who have an amazing memory, such as a professor I recently met with who could remember the page nu…

Savantism is a separate concept from autism, though popular culture has somehow associated the two.

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#158
post #42

>> In early 2022 Krajmalnik-Brown and colleagues patented a specific bacterial formulation and spun-off a commercial company called Gut-Brain Axis Therapeutics. I was a little surprised to see this. So the university researchers use time and money from the university to make a discovery, extending on previous published research, and then patent it and start their own for-profit? Excuse my ignorance, but is that how i…

Yes this is very common and a big part of why scientific progress often seems so hamstrung

Why hamstrung?

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#159
Grate example of how misleading just reading headlines can be, even if the headline isn't intentional misleading/click bait.

> reduce autism symptoms

> chronic gastrointestinal issues are a harsh reality

> boosting microbial diversity

> when [...] treat those gastrointestinal problems, their behavior improves

Through my opinionated take is:

- gastrointestinal issue are a common comorbidity of autism

- fixing that help autistic people to mask better/easier

- which makes a lot of sense as gastrointestinal issue are very stressful and so is masking. It's quite common that autistic people under stress have a harder time masking

- and masking is removing many of the "symptoms" of autism at cost of stress and other risks (e.g. depression), and society(^1) is conditioning(^2) children to mask autism subconsciously all the time

(^1): Pretty much any society out there.

(^2): Both intentional and accidental. For most autistic people masking isn't a conscious choice, but something through live so strongly reinforced that it's done unconsciously even if they don't want to in any situation except a private one with at most some very trusted people around.

---

Through a much more disturbing implication from this article is that at least in US/Arizona children with gastrointestinal issues commonly do not get appropriate treatment... Or else they couldn't have done the test as they wouldn't have found a non highly selection biased sample of autistic children.

Like treating of gastrointestinal issues shouldn't be a thing you do to reduce autistic symptoms, but something you do anyway. Even if not for quality of live, then for the reason of such issues often causing much more server long term issues if they stay untreated for years.

Re: Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials (2019)

#160
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you follow a strict carnivore diet? Health? Accident? Aside from the constipation did it benefit your health?

Obesity and diabetes. It solved about half of the obesity and all of the diabetes.

> and all of the diabetes.

Can you elaborate please? Type 1 or type 2? If type 1, does that mean your body can now produce insulin on its own? If type 2, does that mean the insulin sensitivity of your cells is now back to normal levels and you could eat sugary food without issues?

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