May I draw your attention to...

A very quick post, designed to draw your attention to two very interesting blog posts recently appearing.

The first is by MJ over at Autism Jabberwocky detailing the results of a meta-analysis of the collected studies looking at a potential role for food in cases of ADHD. Bottom-line: based on the available research, dietary intervention (either a restricted diet or a diet devoid of various food colours) might be useful for some people with ADHD in terms of effects on symptom presentation. I know this is probably not a huge surprise to many but lets see where this goes.

The second post features on the Autism Speaks blog summarising the top 10 autism research achievements in 2011. I have an end of year post scheduled in the next week or so which covers quite a few of the studies detailed so won't go too much into that for now. What I would perhaps say, echoing the ADHD-food link, is that much like the final coming together of the Ross-Rachel relationship from Friends (remember that!) or the reuniting of Take That, the natural order of genetics and environment (variably) working in tandem seems to be a recurrent theme in quite a few of the studies included.

Who knows, next year we might even see words like 'epigenetics' and 'endophenotypes' appearing; well I can hope can't I?