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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)

#181
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…

I think the university gets a cut. Kinda like how Gatorade is making I can’t remember which university incredible amounts of money for the last several decades.

The University of Florida, thus the name "Gatorade." or "Gator-aid," if you will.

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

#182
post #101
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

)) ((

Wild to see multiple references in one place! That was one of the more memorable scenes ever…

I burst into laughter after hitting reply and seeing the same message character for character

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

#183

Many autistic children have extremely limited diets. For example, a geneticist friend of mine saw a case where an autistic child had been referred for genetic testing because of horrific, chronic, spontaneous wounds on gums and skin. Turned out to be scurvy, because he had exclusively eaten Wheat Thins for the last 3-4 years, which aren’t fortified with vitamin C. I would fully expect that a monotonous diet leads to…

A little factoid that lodged permanently in my brain the first time I stumbled onto it on Wikipedia:

> About two-thirds of all scurvy is found in autistic people.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries the number of kids born through c-section are very high, more than half the kids in Brazil are born that way for example, so definitely people can be healthy without getting it from their mothers.

> can be healthy Or can they. It’s (meant to be) an emergency procedure. Benefits: life. Downsides: plenty. Maybe most relevant in the context of this thread: “In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 61 studies comprising more than 20 million deliveries, birth by cesarean delivery was significantly associated with autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.“ Zhang, T., Sidorchuk, A.,…

Regarding the first study: follow up from the same authors overturns their own results: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33666663/

> Conclusions and relevance: The findings of this study suggest that the association between CD and increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in the children was most likely explained by unmeasured familial confounding.

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

#185
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert here, but I remember a study that found gut bacteria composition predicted whether or not an individual was chocolate-craving or not in individuals eating identical diets: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17929959

putting aside what others have commented about the truastability of studies and similar - what all studies show is some vague "craving" for something generic, e.g. the link between iron deficiency and craving for ice - but what you see in autists is often a far stronger effect and not just for eating something, but also against eating most other food. A craving for chocolate does not remove appetite and willingness t…

Yes, restrictive behaviors and powerful adherence to familiar routines are a general feature of autism. It’s not specific to food. The comments trying to draw complex links between food cravings and these behaviors are missing the fact that this type of behavior is not limited to foods. Food is only one area where it might manifest.

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

#190

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…

> I think this is the clinical trial registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03408886?tab=results

That's a slightly different clinical trial on adults, not children like the posted article. I think this is the clinical trial registration: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02504554. Here's the followup report in 2019: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42183-0

That said, your reasoning is probably still correct. There's no placebo group, and a lot can change over a 2-year follow-up, with participants aged 7-17. Maybe they went to speech therapy or just matured and learned more coping behaviors. The 2019 followup also notes that 12 of the 18 participants made other diet and medication adjustments. They claim the adjustments were minor but that's still more noise, and it doesn't account for unreported social/environmental changes.

> There have been so many small scale trials showing amazing autism improvements that failed to replicate in larger, better controlled trials. I wouldn’t get excited yet.

Unfortunately yeah, it's unlikely anything exciting will replicate in a larger RCT other than maybe the gut biome improvement since that seems directly mechanistic, but that's just a gut feeling.

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