I'm very much an outsider looking in when it comes to the goings-on at the US Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC). I'm a Limey working here in Blighty (translation: Brit working in the UK) not in the States and as far as I can see we don't have such an agency here in the UK. Yes, we do have the NICE review which is coming to a close shortly but nothing like the IACC which seems to orchestrate many autism-related activities in the States, including research.
Annually, the IACC produce a summary of autism research which kinda brings together the great and the good of progress in understanding what might constitute autism (the autisms). They've just released the 2012 review of autism research (see here) which contains some interesting studies including those covered on this blog.
A few choice studies and posts are presented for your attention:
Six developmental trajectories.... by Fountain and colleagues.
The branched chain amino acid phenotype.... by Novarino and colleagues.
De novo mutations and paternal age.... by Kong and colleagues.
Kum-ba-arbaclofen... by Berry-Kravis and colleagues.
Wandering.... by Anderson and colleagues.
Mortality.... by Bilder and colleagues.
1 in 88.... by the CDC.
'Nuff said.
Thanks Roger.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is a lot of research going on out there and even for someone who reads regularly PubMed and other research listings, often too much to take in.
Your point is exceptionally valid on the need to screen for potentially important conditions when a diagnosis of autism is made. Drs Frye and Rossignol have been valiantly publishing (in the peer-reviewed literature) on many, many different aspects which should be considered as potentially important including CFDS. I hark back also to the work of Dr Haroumi Jynouchi et al and the comorbid observations their team have made on issues as diverse as immune function to food-related conditions.
I do believe there is a small sea-change occurring when it comes to autism; recognising that it is far more than the sum of its clinical triad (soon to be dyad) and the important concept of the autisms (plural). The Novarino paper is an important part of that change in our understanding.