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I curious what ya'll think of this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9512308

I totally believe it...

Yikes!

This "study" has so many things going wrong simultaneously: 1) just 10 subjects, 2) the subjects are children who relied on their parents to report the effects that were experienced, 3) all subjects were confirmed autistic thereby causing a lack of control subjects which could have helped determine the scale of any placebo effect, 4) 50 percent of the subjects were unresponsive to the test, 5) an additional 40 percent of the subjects were only mildly responsive, 6) just a single subject was responsive and showed improvement of autistic characteristics, 7) no parent of any subject was willing to continue the therapy, and 8) even the researcher found no reason to advance the study (gee, no kidding?)

What a waste of tax money!

I couldn't see it.got an error.

The study stated that one child saw an almost complete amelioration of autistic symptoms.

The study mentions that the other five showed improvement but that it could have been just the placebo effect. If someone were to recover that would be obvious. Having it double blinded or having a large sample would not be necessary if the change was obvious. The study did not state that no further research should be done. They said caution should be used as only a very small fraction of a fraction of people with autism may be benefited by the treatment and the cost of the treatment would be very high.

I am not sure why if indeed the one child showed "a very significant amelioration of autistic symptoms" the parents did not wish to continue the research. Maybe the cost of the treatment was millions or something. I still believe it though.


Here is the text if the link doesn't work:

"Since autism has been associated with immunologic abnormalities suggesting an autoimmune cause of autistic symptoms in a subset of patients, this study was undertaken to investigate whether intravenous immunoglobulin (i.v.Ig) would improve autistic symptoms. Ten autistic children with immunologic abnormalities, demonstrated on blood tests, were enrolled in this study. Their ages ranged from 4 to 17 years, with two girls and eight boys. Eight children (1 female and 7 male) historically had undergone autistic regression. Intravenous immunoglobulin, 200 to 400 mg/kg, was administered every 6 weeks for an intended treatment program of four infusions. In five children, there was no detectable change in behavior during the treatment program. In four children, there was a mild improvement noted in attention span and hyperactivity. In none of these children did the parents feel that the improvement was sufficient to warrant further continuation of the infusions beyond the termination of the program. Only in one child was there a very significant improvement, with almost total amelioration of autistic symptoms over the time period of the four infusions. Once the treatment program was completed, this child gradually deteriorated over a 5-month time period and fully reverted to his previous autistic state. In this treatment program, five children had no response to intravenous immunoglobulin. In the four children who showed mild improvements, those improvements may simply have been due to nonspecific effects of physician intervention and parental expectation (ie, placebo effect). However, in one child there was a very significant amelioration of autistic symptoms. There were no distinguishing historic or laboratory features in this child who improved. Given a positive response rate of only 10% in this study, along with the high economic costs of the immunologic evaluations and the intravenous immunoglobulin treatments, the use of intravenous immunoglobulin to treat autistic children should be undertaken only with great caution, and only under formal research protocols."

Also (I am doing some more research on the subject) Intravenous immunoglobulin does have serious possible risks.

Well, the article is from 1998. Since it's costly and use 'should be undertaken only with great caution', I wonder if they ever did follow up on this.

Here is a link to the full text of the first study.

http://www.plioplys.com/aut_3_IVIG_1998_article.pdf

This paper says that the studies since then have been inconclusive and that more research is needed (page eight):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2883089/

Autism cure/theory of the week (yawn). Next.

It is kind of like the oxytocin study that surmised oxytocin would help with symptoms of autism because a tiny sample size study showed lowed oxy levels in autistic people. Turns out the full scale follow up research showed that there is no real difference between NT and autistic levels. It is a broad range for both populations.

Thank you, frogfoot, for the links.

Hum..looks like I am the only one who takes the study seriously. I'm sure the one person did recover, although I am not sure what the wider implications are or what it means for future research.

There is a very strong correlation between the immune system and autism. I don't remember the percentage, but a large percentage of people with autism have an immune deficiency. Also inflammation is thought to play a role in autism.