New Study Casts Doubt on Leaky Gut Theory of Autism
A new study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood suggests that autistic children do not appear to have proteins leaking into their intestinal systems and causing damage, today’s BBC News reports. Researchers at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and the University of Edinburgh found that autistic children did not have more peptides in their urine than did non-autistic children in a control group.
The “leaky gut” theory of autism is based on the belief that vaccines such as the MMR damage the lining of the intestine and create digestive problems in children. It is thought that some children are not able to fully digest proteins called peptides that are found in some foods; the peptides “leak” into the gut and affect the brain. A major proponent of this theory was Dr. Andrew Wakefield; the “leaky gut” theory (which is a theory) led to parents trying special diets (such as one free of casein) for their autistic children.
Tags: andrew wakefield, asd, asperger, autism, gastrointestinal, Health, leaky gut, parents, pdd-nos
13 opinions for New Study Casts Doubt on Leaky Gut Theory of Autism
Patti
Mar 17, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I can only comment on our situation. Whether the MMR had anything to do with our child’s condition, I don’t know.
What I DO know is that from 16 months - 21 months, Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) professionals (and I) attempted to teach my son to sign the word “more”, to join in his play without success, among other things. Sean was also into spinning, stacking cans in the pantry in really cool towers, screamed and cried alot - especially around his 3 year old sister, did not talk, just hummed occasionally, didn’t point - no longer waved goodbye, etc.
At 21 months, our ECI coordinator was the one who pushed us to do the GF/CF diet. Within 3 days, Sean was signing “more” without prompting, the spinning and crying decreased, he would run up to his dad and me, tap us on the leg and look for us to follow him. He had NEVER done that before. Unless he was looking for comfort, he couldn’t have cared less whether we were around or not. He also stopped incessantly lining up toys and the cans in the pantry were left alone most of the time.
Bottom line…the GF/CF diet allowed him to respond to the world around him. That diet was the stepping stone to other biomedical treatments that have greatly helped Sean. For our son, education and biomedical treatments go hand in hand. It has taken the treatments to allow him to respond to the education. But without education, he would not have come as far either.
After reading this blog for several months, I’m sure I will be skewered by some of you. However, today is a good day for us…Sean was diagnosed around 27 months as having high-functioning autism and receives services through the preschool program for children with disabilities also. (He is 3 years, 3 months old) - and today, a doctor told me he couldn’t believe Sean had autism. PLEASE don’t take this to mean that I’m not proud of my son as he is or love him any less. He has some wonderful skills and he is a little sweetheart. I do think that he will continue to progress and that this will allow him to get along better in life.
What I would hope some of you would take from this, is that sometimes a “theory” DOES work for a child. If we wait for science to prove everything, it will be too late. My proof came after 3 months on the diet. Sean had one bite of a regular waffle, and within hours, was back in the pantry, making towers out of the cans and screaming when they fell. It took 3 days for him to return to his “new” self. BTW - casein leaves the body within 3 days.
Patrick
Mar 17, 2008 at 3:46 pm
http://www.newsweek.com/id/123474
Your newsweek interview just hit the web!
a bishops wife
Mar 17, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I do not think anyone knows what “causes” autism or what will “cure” autism. I do know that my Junior is an Autistic person and he is the cutest,smartest, most manipulative little boy you ever saw. I love him so much!
Marla
Mar 17, 2008 at 4:48 pm
M was thought to not be able to digest proteins. There are many metabolic disorders that cause that. So, we had her tested for all of them and nothing showed up. We are trying the gluten free thing but seriously I don’t think we ever see any changes from it. Now that M is sick so often from cyclical vomiting syndrome she is much more picky about what she eats. She had major food aversions to begin with so this is very frustrating.
Jen
Mar 17, 2008 at 7:23 pm
There is actually a growing body of scientific evidence linking problems with gut permeability to autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease, type 1 diabetes and IBS. My understanding is that the theory suggests a pre-existing problem in the gut barrier, and not that vaccines “damage” the gut. I’ve worked in this area of research for a number of years now, and as the Mom of a child with ASD, I’ve paid particular attention to the role of diet in ASD, and noted this article when it came out.
Translating Autism
Mar 17, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Hello Kristina. This is the same study I reviewed today in Translating Autism. I was surprised about how strongly the authors felt about the GF diets and peptide tests, since their data did not address the effectiveness of such diets at all. However, the data is consistent with the Robertson et al. (2008) article I reviewed last week. Cheers, Nestor.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Mar 17, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Great — here is a link. Regarding diet: My son now eats the occasional food with some casein or gluten without any results (note that I say “occasional”). When he was younger, we were much more watchful about his diet. What would you say would indicate “effectiveness”?
Translating Autism
Mar 17, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Thanks Kristina. I’m not familiar enough with past research on GF diets to have an opinion, but I think there are three separate issues related to these two articles: Whether there is evidence supporting the basic premises of the leaky gut theory, whether GF diets work in facilitating adaptive functioning in kids with autism, and whether the testing of peptides could help predict the response to the GF diet. The Cass et al article clearly addressed the first issue. However, the fact that there are no differences in urinary peptides between the two groups does not necessarily address the other two issues. Often therapies are effective even when the theoretical underpinnings of such therapies are unsupported (SSRIs and ‘low serotonin’ is arguably a good example). So ideally we would want to see double-blind experimental studies of GF diets (randomly assigning kids to identical diets that only differ in gluten content) and then observe various outcomes, such as social behaviors, language use, etc etc. I’m not aware of any such published study to date, and if it exists I would love to read it. Cheers, Nestor.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Mar 18, 2008 at 12:21 am
@Patrick,
thanks for noting the Newsweek piece!
vsheehan
Mar 18, 2008 at 7:51 am
Hi
Did you read the whole study? If this blog is based on just the abstract then it is useless.
vsheehan
passionlessDrone
Mar 18, 2008 at 8:42 am
Hello friends -
What I found interesting was the fact that apparently some differences were found, but that it was determined that whatever was found, it wasn’t opioid peptides. No mention was made in the abstract if they were differences between groups.
http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/adc.2006.114389v1
From the abstract:
“Outcomes: There were no significant differences between the HPLC urinary profiles of the children affected by autism and the typically developing controls. In those cases where HPLC showed peaks in the locations at which opioid peptides might be expected to be found., MALDI-TOF established that these peaks did not, in fact, represent opioid peptides at all. ”
Perhaps this is an explanation of why peptides were originally found by one set of researchers, never to re-appear again. It might be nice to know what the peaks did actually represent. (Free copies of the entire paper don’t appear to be available)
I’d like to second the above opinion that an absence of peptides does not necessarily invalidate the leaky gut theory; the theory does not require MMR, nor does it require peptides; it only requires differential intestinal permiability.
There have been other studies showing differential uptakes of sugars by autistics and controls, suggesting permiability issues.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8888921?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
There are also several studies showing differential reaction to dietary proteins of several varieties exhibited by the blood cells of autistics when compared with controls.
Take care all!
- pD
Kristina Chew, PhD
Mar 18, 2008 at 10:09 am
@Translating Autism,
A review of abstracts in databases by Millward C, Ferriter M, Calver S, Connell-Jones G. looked at only a limited number of outcomes:
The authors suggested that “large scale, good quality randomised controlled trials” are needed.
A 2006 Norwegian study looked at urine peptide patterns in children with “milder types of autism” which (in the study) refers to children without mental retardation or milder mental retardation:
The study concluded that “high-functioning autism cannot be identified by the urine peptide pattern,” while noting autism “is probably not homogenous”—-and suggesting that individuals with “milder forms of autism” might represent a more homogenous group.
@vsheehan, yes; thank you for asking.
I’ll speculate that one reason for the specific notation of the GF and CF diets is because of the recent attention given to a special diet in the media and also the association of this theory with Andrew Wakefield.
@pD,
It’s the case that when we first, many years ago, looked at books (academic and popular) about autism, my husband and I noted that diarrhea and GI problems were mentioned by many families. In our experience, my son’s communication difficulties have made it difficult for him to let us know when he might have a stomach or need to get to a restroom in time, and therefore highlighted these sorts of problems. As noted, over time, the need to be completely GF and CF has lessened considerably, with no effects on behavior or learning.
Michelle Dawson
Mar 18, 2008 at 11:31 am
In case anyone’s interested, Elder et al. (2006) is (to quote its abstract) a pilot study that “tested the efficacy of a gluten-free and casein-free (GFCF) diet in treating autism using a randomized, double blind repeated measures crossover design.”
They found no significant group differences.
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