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RESEARCH
'Autistic' Mice Give
Genetic Clues
tinyurl.com/6ph9vm
Scientists have found novel patterns of
ultrasonic vocalizations in a genetic mouse model of autism, adding a
unique element to the available mouse behaviors that capture components
of the human disease, and representing a new step towards identifying
causes and better treatments.
"Particularly intriguing are the unusual
categories of vocalizations and the more frequent, loud harmonics
evident in the BTBR T+ tf/J (BTBR) mouse model of autism, that may
resemble the atypical vocalizations seen in some autistic infants," say
study authors Jacqueline Crawley, PhD, of the National Institute of
Mental Health and Maria Luisa Scattoni, PhD, of the Istituto Superiore
di Sanita in Rome, Italy. Their study appears in the August 27 issue of
the journal PLoS ONE.
Vocal communication in animals has been
extensively documented for many species, including songbirds, whales,
and dolphins. Adult rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations during
aggression, mating, and play, and in response to some stressors.
Separated infant mice and rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations which
elicit pup retrieval to the nest by the parents, and licking and
crouching behaviors by the mother, suggesting that these calls play an
important role in social communication.
Abnormal reciprocal social interactions
and communication deficits are the first two diagnostic symptoms of
autism. BTBR, a commercially available inbred strain of genetically
identical mice, displays unusually low levels of juvenile play and
adult social interactions, relevant to the first diagnostic symptom,
and repetitive self-grooming, relevant to the third diagnostic symptom.
"We hypothesize that ultrasonic vocalizations may be a measure of
social communication in mice. Delayed, reduced, or unusual ultrasonic
vocalizations in mice could offer a useful assay with reasonable face
validity to the second diagnostic symptom of autism, impaired
communication," the authors add.
In the new study, the researchers
classified calls emitted by mouse pups when separated from their
mothers and siblings into ten categories. BTBR pups called more loudly
and more frequently, as compared to three other strains of mice
commonly used in behavioral genetics. Moreover, BTBR pups emitted a
large number of harmonics, a category that was rare in the other
strains, and their call repertoire appeared more limited, suggesting an
unusual pattern or a syllable deficit in BTBR.
The reduced vocal repertoire in BTBR
mice may be analogous to atypical vocalizations in some infants and
young children later diagnosed with autism. Instead of cooing and
babbling, some young children may hum or grunt for extended periods,
fail to add inflections into speech patterns, repeat "pop up" words out
of context, squeal stereotypically, and laugh inappropriately. Others
may be very irritable, cry for long periods of time, and be difficult
to console. More crying in these babies may be similar to the higher
number of separation calls in BTBR pups.
The next step in the research is to
discover whether mice actually communicate meaningful information to
each other using ultrasonic vocalizations. If so, an accurate analysis
of ultrasonic emissions could provide a reliable test to model the
second diagnostic symptom of autism, impaired communication, for use in
identifying genetic and environmental causes of autism, and for
evaluating proposed treatments.
Unusual Repertoire of Vocalizations in
the BTBR T+tf/J Mouse Model of Autism.
Scattoni ML, Gandhy SU, Ricceri L,
Crawley JN (2008) PLoS ONE 3(8): e3067.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003067
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• • •
Stevia Is All-Natural And
Calorie-Free,
But Is It Safe?
tinyurl.com/626eg2
By Elena Conis, The LA Times
Stevia followers are a diverse bunch,
including health nuts and food-industry magnates. The draw? The
sweetener is all-natural and naturally calorie-free. But "natural"
doesn't necessarily mean safe, and scientists have long struggled to
make sense of early evidence hinting that stevia could be toxic. A
series of studies published last month in the journal Food and Chemical
Toxicology put that question to the test for one type of stevia-based
sweeteners.
Stevia, a South American shrub, has
leaves up to 300 times sweeter than table sugar. Extracts have been
available as a dietary supplement since 1995. It's a popular food
additive in Japan, Brazil and its native Paraguay, but in the U.S.,
where the Food and Drug Administration has determined there isn't
sufficient proof it's nontoxic, stevia is banned from such uses.
(Exceptions are made for food and drink items billing themselves as
dietary supplements, such as the stevia-sweetened diet drink
Zevia.) The sponsors of the recently published studies --
food manufacturer Cargill and the Coca-Cola Co. -- hope that in light
of recent findings, the agency will reconsider its position on the
calorie-free sweetener.
Scientists began studying stevia in the
lab roughly 40 years ago, and the first findings gave food safety
officials in several countries pause. A 1968 study in female rats
showed that drinking a concoction of stevia leaves and stems
significantly reduced fertility. A 1985 study, published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that steviol, a
breakdown product of stevia, might cause genetic mutations. (In
Paraguayan traditional medicine, stevia is used to lower blood sugar
and as a contraceptive.)
Evidence of genetic and reproductive
toxicity was sufficient to inspire a ban on the sweetener in the U.S.
since the 1970s. (The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act
made it legal to sell stevia as a dietary supplement only, as long as
it's not an ingredient in food.) But the research on which the FDA
based its long-ago decision may now be out of date. In the last decade,
countless studies have revisited stevia, often using purer extracts.
+ Read more: tinyurl.com/626eg2
• • •
Turning the Tongue
Into A Computer Control Pad
Researchers work toward a mouth-powered control system for the disabled
By Greg Bluestein for the
Associated Press.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26338543
The tireless tongue already controls
taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now
scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn
it into a computer control pad.
Georgia Tech researchers believe a
magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person's
mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard — and tongue into
the key that manipulates it all.
"You could have full control over your
environment by just being able to move your tongue," said Maysam
Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team's
research.
The group's Tongue Drive System turns
the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to
manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers.
The work still has a ways to go — one potential user called the design
"grotesque" — but early tests are encouraging.
The system is far from the first that
seeks a new way to control electronics through facial movements. But
disabled advocates have particularly high hopes that the tongue could
prove the most effective.
"This could give you an almost infinite
number of switches and options for communication," said Mike Jones, a
vice president of research and technology at the Shepherd Center, an
Atlanta rehabilitation hospital. "It's easy, and somebody could learn
an entirely different language."
+ Read more: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26338543
• • •
PUBLIC HEALTH
Strife Over Shots:
Should Our Kids Play Together?
From MSNBC. tinyurl.com/5e6t6z
Karey Williams never thought a parenting
decision would come between her and a good friend. The two had known
one another for a decade, supported each other through infertility
treatment and had their first babies around the same time. But when she
told the friend that she had stopped vaccinating her daughter at age 1,
the relationship abruptly ended.
"She said, 'Well then, your child can't
come into my house,'" recalls Williams, 47, who lives in the Chicago
area.
That's not the only time Williams has
encountered conflict because of the decision she made for her daughter,
now 7. "I've had people voice their opposition to me, that I'm ruining
the herd immunity ... that my child would put their child at risk," she
says.
While the vast majority of American
parents vaccinate their children, more appear to be opting against
immunization. One study found that the percentage of parents who took
personal belief exemptions to state laws requiring school-age kids to
be vaccinated increased from just under 1 percent in 2001 to about 2.5
percent in 2004.
Heightened attention to the heated
vaccine debate has parents on both sides of the fence discussing the
issues more and sometimes finding themselves in awkward or even
acrimonious social situations. Whether an unvaccinated child should be
kicked out of a play group was the topic of a recent ethics column in
The New York Times Magazine that got considerable buzz in parenting
circles.
Many parents who choose not to vaccinate
- often because of fear that autism could be caused by vaccines (though
there's no scientific evidence of a connection), or they have other
philosophical or religious objections - argue that if another person's
child is immunized, what's the problem? Many parents who vaccinate feel
this way too, if they think about the issue at all.
But vaccines aren't an absolute
guarantee. Most are 90 percent to 99 percent effective, according to
the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Jennifer Collado, 37, of Glen Rock,
N.J., says members of her son's toddler play group were "stunned" when
one mother mentioned that her child wasn't vaccinated. The group didn't
kick them out though, and shortly after they moved out of state. But
the group felt that information should have been mentioned upfront.
"Someone pointed out to her that it was her choice to do that but that
she was putting everyone's kids in jeopardy by not having her kids
vaccinated," Collado says.
'Like a secret society' Knowing how
volatile the subject is, many parents opposed to vaccination choose to
avoid it in conversation or seek out play groups and schools with other
unvaccinated children like their own, say Williams and others.
"It's sort of like a secret society,"
says Williams, who is on the board of directors of Moms Against
Mercury, a North Carolina-based group that opposes the use of mercury
in vaccines. "You feel each mom out and when you feel like you're on
the same page, you discuss it."
+ Read more: tinyurl.com/5e6t6z
• • •
MEDIA
Researcher, Author
Explores Therapies For Aspergers
By Kelli Bamforth. tinyurl.com/5n6lz5
She may be an expert now, but at first,
it took awhile for Lisa Barrett Mann to recognize her son’s quirks as
symptoms of Asperger syndrome.
Mann had studied autism in pursuit of a
bachelor’s degree in psychology, but was told it was a severe disorder,
where patients sat in the corner, rocked and never spoke.
And that certainly did not describe her
son, David.
“He was a really smart little kid …
everybody was amazed by how smart he was,” Mann said. “He was different
though, quirky, and I wasn’t sure for a long time what was going on
with him. I didn’t recognize his quirks as being related to autism."
David always had one subject over which
he obsessed, Mann said. He could repeat long monologues and dialogues
from movies and TV, and had a diverse vocabulary – in kindergarten, he
knew what interdimensional portals were, but not a counter.
Mann had risen from a reporter at a
health care trade publication to become group publisher, but when David
entered kindergarten, his needs increased.
“With kids with AS, it gets more
difficult as they start school because social demands increase,” Mann
said. “You have to be more compliant and do what the teacher wants you
to do when. He needed more attention from me, so I started working as a
freelance writer for the Washington Post health care section and trade
publications."
Mann stumbled across her son’s diagnosis
on Google one day. She saw the symptoms of Asperger syndrome and
immediately recognized them.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s our son,’”
Mann said. “It was six months before we could get an appointment for a
diagnosis, but I started focusing more on that and doing less
reporting. I was editing books on developmental disabilities, educating
myself at seminars and conferences. Eventually I got so absorbed and
fascinated that we moved out to the Kansas City area so I could go to
the University of Kansas.
“They have the top special education
department in the country, but also one of the top autism research
departments. They’ve done lots of research on AS that not many
universities have done yet – there is a lot more attention on autism."
In May, Mann received KU’s School of
Education Outstanding Master’s Project award for her study titled
“Evidence-Based Interventions for Asperger Syndrome."
Her thesis also placed second in the KU
Graduate Student Research Competition and was an invited presentation
at the Capitol Research Summit in Topeka, which highlights top graduate
and medical school research in Kansas.
Mann’s research found that
cognitive-behavioral interviews have the best scientific evidence of
effectiveness for AS. She performed an analysis of all scientific
studies published in peer-reviewed journals that evaluated AS
intervention effectiveness.
More than 80 percent of the effective
interventions used cognitive techniques.
“For autism in general, applied
behavioral analysis has the greatest amount of research backing as
effective,” Mann said. “Children with AS often overlap with children
with autism, but they manifest symptoms differently. Because of lots of
attention on applied behavioral analysis, people have lobbied to
mandate that training for every child on the autism spectrum, including
those with AS.
“I thought that wasn’t the approach for
our kids."
Children with AS are typically very
verbal with large vocabularies, Mann said. Also, a large percentage of
children with autism have mental retardation, but by definition, those
with AS have normal IQs and 20 percent are considered gifted.
Cognitive-behavioral interventions
approach not just behaviors, but how a child thinks about situations,
Mann said. For example, a cognitive-behavioral therapy might be writing
short stories to introduce a child to specific situations, explaining
the behavioral expectations and what might happen.
“Often, AS kids like predictability, and
the short stories make the situation predictable for them,” Mann said.
“Once they understand what’s happening, behavior problems go away.
Social skills training also falls in that area, and that’s where I do
most of my work. While (AS kids) are smart and active in academics,
they don’t automatically pick up on social cues.
“They need to be taught differently,
taught things that other kids don’t need to be taught … they can be
socially naïve, but they’re really sweet kids and they often have fun,
quirky senses of humor. I love working with these kids."
Mann recently published her first book,
“More than Little Professors: Children with Asperger Syndrome, In Their
Own Words.” The book includes poetry, stories and quotes from more than
70 children and young adults with Asperger syndrome.
“The term ‘little professors’ has stuck
with kids with AS,” Mann said. “They have special interests and
encyclopedic knowledge and often lecture you about what they know –
whether it’s Superman or vacuum cleaners."
Some of the material is cute and funny,
while some discusses difficult situations, such as dealing with the
loss of a loved one.
“It’s nice to be able to share how the
kids experience the world in their own words … you learn more when you
hear from the kids themselves,” Mann said. “You get a different view of
them."
She said she hopes the book will be
useful for families and parents, but also used in graduate programs to
help students studying special education or psychology.
Mann established a private practice in
her Overland Park residence, where she specializes in evidence-based
interventions for children with Asperger syndrome and similar
social-learning disorders.
David, now 13, attends Lakewood Middle
School in the Blue Valley School District. The school has a program for
AS kids, but David only goes for one or two class periods and spends
the rest of the day in general education.
He receives straight A’s, has friends
and just participated in the Duke Talent Identification Program,
earning above-average scores on the ACT college entrance exam, Mann
said.
“It’s great he’s doing well in school,
but he’s happy, he has friends,” she said. “He has no behavior problems
anymore."
• • •
Autism Research Institute
Releases New Autism.tv Site
The Autism Research Institute is pleased
to announce the release of its Autism.tv website featuring links to
stories of intervention and recovery. The website is intended to
demonstrate to parents, physicians, and research scientists that
recovery is a reality for a significant percentage of children with
autism.
Autism.tv www.autism.com/tv/
links to caregiver stories about treatment and recovery. Please send us
existing story links to:
- Videos (youTube, short films,
etc.)
- Online video news clips
- Online (written) news stories or blog
articles published on the Web
• • •
COMMENTARY
Consequences of Fear
From the Republican American. tinyurl.com/6benwo
The Associated Press put on a clinic in
sensationalism last week with its dispatch "Measles at decade high as
more parents fear vaccine." Those parents rejected the two-stage MMR
(measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine for their children because one
study involving 170 children found high rates of autism among the
vaccinated. That finding was refuted by subsequent research, including
one 14-year study involving 2 million European children.
Parental fears were stoked, of course,
by media scaremongering; the original news ran under banner headlines
while news demolishing the MMR-autism link was buried. But after
frightening some parents away from the vaccine, the AP now
sensationally reports: "Measles cases in the United States are at the
highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of those
involving children whose parents rejected vaccination."
As the AP later reports, however, just
131 children have come down with measles this year. Yes, only 42 cases
were reported last year, but 131, even in this context, barely rises to
the level of an outbreak.
And no media hype would be complete
without exaggerating the threat. The AP's claim that measles "is a
potentially deadly ... virus" is barely true in the Third World, but
it's nearly false in America, where the chances of contracting measles
is only 0.01 percent and only one-third of 1 percent of those who get
the virus die, mostly from complications from pre-existing conditions
such as leukemia, lung disease, cerebral palsy and immune deficiency.
As a physician wrote in a letter to the British Medical Journal in
2005, "Under normal conditions, healthy children do not die from or
become disabled from the complications of measles and if they do,
questions should be asked about their management."
High vaccination rates have prevented
major measles outbreaks in this country for going on 50 years and will
continue to do so for years to come. And no amount of media
fear-mongering can change that boring truth.
• • •
Why Some Parents Question
Vaccines
"Measles cases in the U.S. are at the highest level in more than a
decade, with nearly half of those involving children whose parents
rejected vaccination, health officials reported."--Mike Stobbe
of the
Associated Press.
By Julie Deardorff, Chicago Tribune.
tinyurl.com/6jeszp
From a public health standpoint, a drop
in vaccination rates is considered a crisis because it increases the
chances of a mass disease outbreak.
But the real crisis is not that some
parents skip or delay vaccination because they believe vaccines might
pose health risks or are linked to autism. It's that they're losing
confidence in public health officials and policy, partly because
vaccines are being forced on them, regardless of their personal desires
or beliefs.
The mistrust began in 1997 when Congress
asked the Food and Drug Administration to measure the levels of the
mercury-based preservative thimerosal found in vaccines. At the same
time, the Internet was dramatically changing how the public accessed
medical information.
Safety standards for thimerosal did not
exist, but the finding that six-month-old children could be exposed to
187.7 micrograms of mercury (more than 80 micrograms above the
recommended limit for methylmercury, a related compound) prompted
safety concerns. Thimerosal was removed from many (but not all)
vaccines as a precaution.
Meanwhile, the number of new and
required vaccines kept rising. Immunization against diseases that were
once a childhood rite of passage and that conferred lifelong immunity,
such as chickenpox, was now mandated for public school.
In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control
recommended 23 doses of 7 vaccines for children up to age 6.
Today, children are supposed to receive
48 doses of 12 vaccines by age six. (Toss in the flu shot, which may or
may not be effective, and it boosts the number to 69 doses of 16
vaccines by age 18.)
Even if the vaccines do not have
thimerosal, parents are wondering, "Why do I have to give my child a
Hepatitis B shot at birth?" And "Why have more than two dozen states
tried to mandate the vaccine for humanpapilloma virus (HPV) when we
still lack evidence that it's effective against cervical cancer,
something Dr. Charlotte Haug pointed out in the New England
Journal of Medicine?"
Other developments that have undermined
the public's faith in health officials:
* Officials with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) fudged data to prove that Hurricane Katrina
survivors were not getting sick from their FEMA trailers, Democratic
lawmakers charged. In fact, residents were breathing in formaldehyde, a
known carcinogen.
* Last year, a week after the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control announced that the influenza vaccine was
effective against only 40 percent of the season's flu viruses, it
recommended that all children over the age of 6 months get a flu shot.
* In February, health officials
announced that the combination vaccine Pro Quad, which protects against
measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox, may pose some health risks.
* Research suggests that America might
be over-vaccinating its kids and that we might want to re-evaluate and
adjust the immunization schedule. But not because of health concerns;
the vaccines might just be unnecessary and waste a lot of money
according to the study by researchers with Oregon Health & Science
University published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
* The American Academy of Pediatrics
recommended issuing cholesterol drugs to ward off heart disease for
some children as young as 8, even though there's a lack of evidence
that the use of statins in children would prevent heart attacks later
in life. * A study in the journal
Pediatrics found that 33 percent of pediatricians would strongly
recommend the rotavirus vaccine, if it were up to the doctor's
discretion. But if it becomes an "official" recommendation by the AAP,
that number goes up to 50 percent. Likewise 20 percent of pediatricians
would recommend against it, but that number goes down to 11 percent if
it is officially recommended for routine use. "This basically indicates
that some pediatricians are willing to disregard their honest feelings
about what is best for their patients and are unwilling to "buck the
system," my pediatrician told me. "Instead, they will blindly follow
the dictates of the AAP."
* The AAP issued a sample letter to
pediatricians suggesting that physicians tell parents who refuse to
vaccinate that they have a "self-centered and unacceptable attitude"
since their child is getting protection from others who have chosen to
vaccinate. Parents who absolutely refuse to vaccinate could be booted
from your pediatrician's practice.
* In Maryland, parents who didn't
vaccinate their children against chickenpox and Hepatitis B were
threatened with jail time and fines.
Vaccines represent social health without
regard to individuals. That's how they work. But threatening
parents--especially American parents who pride themselves on rugged
individualism--will not inspire them to vaccinate their children.
We don't know what causes autism or the
other chronic childhood disorders that are increasing, including
asthma, allergy and attention deficit disorder. Until we do, parents
should have the right to ask as many questions as they need to. We
routinely question the safety of most things we put in our children's
bodies, whether it's food, herbs, over-the-counter medications or
prescription drugs. Vaccines should not be an exception.
Note: The opinions expressed in COMMENTARY are those of
the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Schafer
Autism Report.
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