Scientists have made remarkable advances in understanding autism’s causes in recent years. Autism is now believed to affect 1 in 88 children. However, this knowledge has not been widely shared with the public. The focus is often on vaccines.
The abbreviated version of autism is that affects one third or more, looks like an inflammatory disease and it is monitored meticulously from the beginning in the womb,
Scientists call it immune dysregulation. Your immune system should function like an intelligent action hero. It should respond quickly to any inflammation with precision, accuracy, and deadly force. This requires a balanced mix of anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory muscles.
The immune system is unable to balance the needs of autistic people. Inflammatory signals are dominant. The anti-inflammatory options are insufficient. Chronic activation is the dominant state. The more autistic symptoms are triggered by inflammation, the worse they will be.
The autistic brain is the most affected by dysregulation. Chronic activation causes the growth of spidery cells, also known as astroglia or microglia. There are many pro-inflammatory signaling molecules. The genes involved in inflammation can be switched on.
These findings are significant for many reasons. But perhaps the most important is that they show evidence of an abnormal, ongoing biological process. This means there is now a treatment target for a disorder that can be defined as repetitive behaviour, social impairments, and difficulty communicating.
How can we address this problem and where do we start? Scientists have found the answer to this question in the womb. An extensive population-wide study in Denmark that covered two decades of births shows that an infection during pregnancy can increase the risk of autism. The odds of getting a viral infection such as the flu in the first trimester are tripled if you’re hospitalized. The chance of contracting a bacterial infection (including one in the urinary tract) during the second trimester is 40 percent higher.
This is not a case where bacteria and viruses directly harm the fetus. It is the mother’s attempt at repelling invaders, her inflammatory response, that seems to be the problem. Paul Patterson, an expert on neuro immunity at Caltech has demonstrated this principle. Behaviour problems are caused by artificially inflaming pregnant mice without the use of an infective agent. This model shows that autism is caused by collateral damage. It is an unintended consequence for self-defense during pregnancy.
It is absurd to attribute the autism epidemic to infections. First, epidemiology does not fit in the larger sense. Infantile autism was first described by Leo Kanner in 1943. Although the number of cases has increased tenfold, careful analysis suggests that it is actually less than half. However, both viral and bacterial infections have declined in the same time frame. We are, by many measures, more infected than ever before in human history.
