Bacteria in the Gut of Autistic Children Different from Non-Autistic Children
January 10th, 2012Via: Medical Express:
Earlier work has revealed that autistic individuals with gastrointestinal symptoms often exhibit inflammation and other abnormalities in their upper and lower intestinal tracts. However, scientists do not know what causes the inflammation or how the condition relates to the developmental disorders that characterize autism. The research results appearing in mBio indicate the communities of microorganisms that reside in the gut of autistic children with gastrointestinal problems are different than the communities of non-autistic children. Whether or not these differences are a cause or effect of autism remains to be seen.
Related:
Research Credit: JS
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Oh my goodness Madge, could it be yet another case of “industrial disease”…?
Pasteur was wrong. Admitted as much on his deathbed. In other words, germ theory was discredited by its creator — well over a century ago.
So, why is it that the ruling paradigm in “modern” medicine clings to long-outmoded models and remain utterly clueless when it comes to the role of nutrition in gut health and the crucial relationship we have with the bacterial colony that is our insides.
In fact, to cop a riff from the late, great Douglas Adams, I strongly suspect that bacteria are actually running the universe and we’re simply the most intricate and complex transport mechanisms they’ve come up with so far.
At least in this quadrant.
The gut microbiome is incredibly complex. This paper is intriguing, but we only know the tip of the iceberg about these bugs. Here is a recent Nature paper:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature09944.html
Our knowledge of species and functional composition of the human gut microbiome is rapidly increasing, but it is still based on very few cohorts and little is known about variation across the world. By combining 22 newly sequenced faecal metagenomes of individuals from four countries with previously published data sets, here we identify three robust clusters (referred to as enterotypes hereafter) that are not nation or continent specific. We also confirmed the enterotypes in two published, larger cohorts, indicating that intestinal microbiota variation is generally stratified, not continuous. This indicates further the existence of a limited number of well-balanced host–microbial symbiotic states that might respond differently to diet and drug intake. . . Although individual host properties such as body mass index, age, or gender cannot explain the observed enterotypes, data-driven marker genes or functional modules can be identified for each of these host properties. For example, twelve genes significantly correlate with age and three functional modules with the body mass index, hinting at a diagnostic potential of microbial markers.
Dr. Eli Metchnikoff, a brilliant Russian Nobel prize winner at the turn of last centurt wrote an amazing work, The Prolongation of Life, which is available on Google scanned documents. In summary he said that “death begins in the gut” and spoke repeatedly on the need to consume kefir and other fermented foods. To this day in Russia, women and their newborns are given free kefir for the first two years of their life.