Join the autism research dots?

A very, very short post this one...

I don't want to make too much of the paper by Heberling and colleagues* with the grand title: Hypothesis for a systems connectivity model of autism spectrum disorder pathogenesis: Links to gut bacteria, oxidative stress, and intestinal permeability because it is, as the title suggests, a hypothesis join-the-research-dots type of manuscript rather than a novel scientific experiment paper.

Published also in a journal that has had its fair share of controversy down the years, which depending on your point of view, is either a good forum for some blue-sky thinking or an outlet for some very different kind of thinking. I make no value judgement by the way.

All that being said, I am suitably intrigued that this team from the University of Delaware have gone to the effort to try and unite some of the various research findings reported in cases of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) into a coherent document. Indeed, included in the Heberling paper are various areas of research which have to varying degrees appeared on this blog and remain of some personal research interest to me: oxidative stress, sulphation issues, gluten, bacterial issues (itself the issue of an even more recent paper by Mulle and colleagues**) and gut permeability (leaky gut).

A quote from the paper: ".. oxidative stress and sulfur metabolic deficiencies could cause changes in colonic bacterial composition; and environmental bacterial contaminants could lead to elevated oxidative stress in individual".

Discuss...

And while you are thinking/discussing, why not listen to Kermit singing about his happy feet.

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* Heberling CA. et al. Hypothesis for a systems connectivity model of autism spectrum disorder pathogenesis: Links to gut bacteria, oxidative stress, and intestinal permeability. Med Hypotheses. December 2012.

** Mulle JG. et al. The gut microbiome: a new frontier in autism research. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2013; 15: 337.

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Heberling CA, Dhurjati PS, & Sasser M (2012). Hypothesis for a systems connectivity model of autism spectrum disorder pathogenesis: Links to gut bacteria, oxidative stress, and intestinal permeability. Medical hypotheses PMID: 23273906