Autism, immunity, a game-changing discovery

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I think the title is slightly disingenuous... the discovery is pretty big but we don't really have reason to connect it to autism, it's the usual "find something out and stick 'autism and Alzheimer's' on the end".

I'm not studying neuroanatomy until next year, but the notion that "we've mapped the brain" is news to me. The actually quote in the article is "we've mapped the body", and specifically the lymph system.

That viral one though

I don't think this is right. There have been many, many studies linking a variety of inflammatory processes to autism. The discovery that the lymphatic system extends into the brain is relevant and opens new avenues of study.

I thought there was a special research project only a couple of years ago to map the brain.

If I remember correctly the Sheffield university part was mapping the main superhighways and an American counterpart was doing a fruit fly or something.

The BBC cover big science like this very well and I've not heard about these maps being finished and as far as I remember it was going to take quite a while. However I did see some really good high resolution scans a few weeks ago.

Off to read the actual articles

I am also impressed by the study, just the fact that they have discovered that the lymphatic system extends into the brain, it's amazing.
But in regard to autism: if there was any connection (autism, autoimmune system), would that turn autism from a developmental disorder into an autoimmune disease?
Still, if it would be, the difference to Alzheimer's: it develops late in live and different theories, like accumulation of aluminium.
I read that some patients with Alzheimer's suddenly became savants in different areas, like autistic savants and displayed autistic symptoms.
But still, what what be the real cause of autism then?
And what does this study want to suggest: curing autism in the future?
Alzheimer's appears much later in life after lots of contact with environmental toxins.

I can't imagine there is one "cure" as I think there is a whole variety of things that present as autism. At the moment autism is just the presentation of certain traits which can't be explained by anything else. I think as science advances they might find subsets of autism each caused by something different. Some families (like mine) have a large amount of people with autism, while others an autistic child is born to complete NTs. I don't think they're caused by the same thing so the cures would likely be different. But I could be very easily wrong because this is a prediction based on very little.

This research is not about a cure, or a cause. It's about the discovery of a connection. This will help understanding of the connections between inflammatory problems and autism. This will open research that will reveal more about the processes behind these conditions.

The basic research will be applied by many different fields in medicine, though what I think might happen is that the big questions are going to asked in the field of lymphoma, and the applied research will probably be focused there for the next few years.

For example, it has been known for years that the brain gets the terrible form of cancer called lymphoma - (as well as other parts of the body) - yet no-one ever seemed to seriously question how/why the brain gets lymphoma; no-one was saying, "if the brain itself doesn't have a lymph system, how come this is happening?".

Other sub-specialities in cancer treatment would have been electrified by the news. It has never been made clear how and why lung cancer so often spreads to the brain. Now they will be asking whether the lymph system is involved in some particular way.

Because the lymph system is part of the immune system, and because there are thousands of research studies that connect immunity factors and the greater incidence of immune issues in ASD populations, I think the focus is more likely to be in those - not on any "cure for autism". It would be pretty extreme to claim that this discovery is a "cure" for anything at this stage - it is more of an explanation of certain things that have either been long standing puzzles (in some cases) or ignored/dismissed as 'impossible' in others. It may also remind all medical practitioners, teachers of medicine and researchers to keep open minds and that is overwhelmingly a good thing.