Please tell me what you think of this study.

[b33fj3rky]

Please tell me what you think of this study:

http://fullcircle.asu.edu/2013/02/s...several-toxic-metals-in-children-with-autism/

And its obvious implication that toxic metals cause autism.

 

[Weak Kitten]

Well, to begin with I find it strange that an Engineering professor was leading what should be a biochemistry or medical study. The article doesn't have any links to the paper itself so I really can't say anything about that.

Wasn't the latest thing in autism the discovery of problems with the balance of stomach flora in autistic children? Though I seem to recall that it was related to a problem with the amount of sulfur in their bodies. Perhaps that same problem can also show up as increased metal content or improper storage of metal in the body?

I'm just speculating now. Without a paper to look at there really isn't much else to do.

 

[Prometheus]

Well, to begin with I find it strange that an Engineering professor was leading what should be a biochemistry or medical study. The article doesn't have any links to the paper itself so I really can't say anything about that.

Wasn't the latest thing in autism the discovery of problems with the balance of stomach flora in autistic children? Though I seem to recall that it was related to a problem with the amount of sulfur in their bodies. Perhaps that same problem can also show up as increased metal content or improper storage of metal in the body?

I'm just speculating now. Without a paper to look at there really isn't much else to do.

Not so strange, really. This kind of research is one of the stated missions of the university he works for., and it's not all that big a stretch to image a materials scientist being interested in the effects of certain materials on human health.

 

[Weak Kitten]

Oooh, I see. They develop testing devices and the like. That makes things make a bit more sense. Thanks.

 

[Prometheus]

Looks like this is the study in the OP.

I'm not sure whether I have access to this journal or not. I'll check when I go back to my office next week.

 

[marplots]

I only read the abstract and looked at a few of the references cited. The study seems to show that children with autism are less able to methylate and remove some toxic metals when compared to non-autistic children and this is correlated with the degree of autism seen. The implication is that autism has a metabolic component.

Note that the level of metals is predictive, even when cadmium (something found in lower amounts in autistic children) is considered. What I'd like to see is if there is an altered metabolic pathway that both clears cadmium better and doesn't clear the other metals listed as well.

Interestingly, it's the sort of answer I'd naively expect if autism has a genetic component which changes some important metabolic biology primarily and mentation secondarily.

As far as I can tell, the paper isn't identifying these metals as causative for autism, but markers or co-factors with an underlying, unidentified cause. But, I'd want to read the paper to do other than guess. Also, please understand I am not well read in autism generally.

 

[ben m]

The causation might be backwards. Suppose, for example, that it's comparatively hard to get an autistic child to bathe or wash his hands; it's harder to get them to eat with utensils. Therefore, autistic kids are (on average) carrying more environmental dust/dirt on their hands, and more of that dirt gets into their mouths. Therefore, they're exposed to higher levels of all particulate pollution, including both mercury and lead.

That's all it takes to wind up with "lead level correlates with autism severity". This is why epidemiology is hard, folks.

(Maybe the cadmium thing speaks against this particular hypothesis though.)

 

[sophia8]

Here's the study.

First of all, 55 children from one US state is a very small sample.
Second, how were the autism group selected? Was it a random selection or were they all drawn from one self-selected group?
Third, I didn't see anything about diet in there. Although the researchers say that all the children, including the controls, hadn't taken any vitamin supplements, how did they check? And many parents of autistic children put them on special diets and/or feed them non-vitamin supplements; some even regularly chelate them for heavy metals, which would surely distort the results of blood tests.

 

[Dancing David]

Please tell me what you think of this study:

http://fullcircle.asu.edu/2013/02/s...several-toxic-metals-in-children-with-autism/

And its obvious implication that toxic metals cause autism.

Small sample size, no standard deviation used and no other reason to suspect any thing.

Statistical regression on a sample of 55 individuals does not indicate link to severity of autism.

What is the base level and deviation in the samples and does the autism level rise above the noise level?

Why is the journal it is published in an open access journal and not a standard journal?

 

[Dancing David]

I only read the abstract and looked at a few of the references cited. The study seems to show that children with autism are less able to methylate and remove some toxic metals when compared to non-autistic children and this is correlated with the degree of autism seen. The implication is that autism has a metabolic component.

Note that the level of metals is predictive, even when cadmium (something found in lower amounts in autistic children) is considered. What I'd like to see is if there is an altered metabolic pathway that both clears cadmium better and doesn't clear the other metals listed as well.

Interestingly, it's the sort of answer I'd naively expect if autism has a genetic component which changes some important metabolic biology primarily and mentation secondarily.

As far as I can tell, the paper isn't identifying these metals as causative for autism, but markers or co-factors with an underlying, unidentified cause. But, I'd want to read the paper to do other than guess. Also, please understand I am not well read in autism generally.

Now that is interesting.

 

[Capsid]

Why is the journal it is published in an open access journal and not a standard journal?

Not sure why that is an issue? The PLOS journals are open access but still go through rigorous peer review.

 

[Estellea]

I only gave the paper a brief read and some things stood out to me. First, the participants were recruited by Autism Society of Greater Phoenix which is part of the umbrella organisation of Autism Society of America. Both are heavily invested in a vaccine causation and still cling to the belief that thimerosal causes autism. They also heavily promote "biomed" for "treating" autism which includes chelation based upon a challenge test which is not acceptable.

The authors also used some dubious labs for their metrics, DoctorsData and Vitamin Diagnostics which cater to so called 'autism doctors' and perform non-standardised tests which are then used to justify rather awful treatments. The authors also got pretty creative with their statistical analyses not only with some of their tests but also their own strata of statistically significant.

The results were kind of all over the place and they didn't control at all for medications and diets that the children were on. What they found for some metrics is not conclusive for causality but rather correlative which could very well be explained by neurobehaviours as many ASD children have sensory and texture issues that not only affect their dietary preferences but also effect inappropriate ingestion of non-food materials.

The study was funded in part by Autism Research Institute which also believes that autism is caused by vaccines and can be "cured". They support doctors who are not qualified in ASDs to treat ASD children. They have a lot of money behind them and there is no excuse for them to be funding such crap studies when they have actually funded some good ones.

Este

 

[marplots]

I only gave the paper a brief read and some things stood out to me. First, the participants were recruited by Autism Society of Greater Phoenix which is part of the umbrella organisation of Autism Society of America. Both are heavily invested in a vaccine causation and still cling to the belief that thimerosal causes autism. They also heavily promote "biomed" for "treating" autism which includes chelation based upon a challenge test which is not acceptable.

The authors also used some dubious labs for their metrics, DoctorsData and Vitamin Diagnostics which cater to so called 'autism doctors' and perform non-standardised tests which are then used to justify rather awful treatments. The authors also got pretty creative with their statistical analyses not only with some of their tests but also their own strata of statistically significant.

The results were kind of all over the place and they didn't control at all for medications and diets that the children were on. What they found for some metrics is not conclusive for causality but rather correlative which could very well be explained by neurobehaviours as many ASD children have sensory and texture issues that not only affect their dietary preferences but also effect inappropriate ingestion of non-food materials.

The study was funded in part by Autism Research Institute which also believes that autism is caused by vaccines and can be "cured". They support doctors who are not qualified in ASDs to treat ASD children. They have a lot of money behind them and there is no excuse for them to be funding such crap studies when they have actually funded some good ones.

Este

Should be easy to check, assuming testing for heavy metals in blood isn't too hard. I'm wondering if this has been looked at before, by whom, and what they found.

 

[Estellea]

Should be easy to check, assuming testing for heavy metals in blood isn't too hard. I'm wondering if this has been looked at before, by whom, and what they found.

A lot of studies have been performed. Results all over the place depending upon the methodologies and biased investigators. I think the question is a good one; it just needs to be tested more rigorously.

Este

 

[Weak Kitten]

It is a shame that there are so many biased investigators when it comes to autism. It makes getting to the scientific truth a lot more difficult. It also seems that the more the conspiracy theorists and "big pharma" haters yell the more others become biased in the opposite direction. I wonder if they know that that they are their own worst enemies when it comes to gaining credibility?

 

[fuelair]

Small sample size, no standard deviation used and no other reason to suspect any thing.

Statistical regression on a sample of 55 individuals does not indicate link to severity of autism.

What is the base level and deviation in the samples and does the autism level rise above the noise level?

Why is the journal it is published in an open access journal and not a standard journal?

Because a lot of researchers are tired of the costs associated with standard journals (subscription rates and copy rates and individual download rates are causing many in the publish or perish locations to try for OA journals so they can get quoted more and named more and keep their jobs). Derek Lowe writes about this fairly often in: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/

 

[Dinwar]

I haven't read the study, but two things jump out at me:

1) Open-access does not mean bad data. Paleontologica Electronica has been open-acces for a long time, and has recently switched to a web-only format. Still peer-reviewed--I've met some of the reviewers, and have worked with some of the publications (doing so now, in fact), and both the review team and the results are just as good as you get from any paywall journal. The issue is fiscal, not scientific: some journals simply don't have enough people interested in them to make the journal viable from a financial standpoint. Science is becoming increasingly specialized, and that means journals need to make more per person than before. That just can't happen, so while Science and Nature may remain paywalled, more specialized journals are leaning more heavily towards open-access. And there's a rather vigorous debate in science as to what the implications of the internet are. Some say go all open-access, some say stick to the traditional route, and some (I'm in this camp) say it should be decided on a case-by-case basis, to take advantage of both types of formats.

At any rate, the fact that something's open-access in no way informs us as to the quality.

2) Heavy metals are relatively easy to identify. Even crap machinery like I used to work with (a graphite furnace AAS that was running on a Windows 3.1 machine that the department finally gave away to the Chemistry department) can identify most heavy metals to within 5 ppm reliably (below that the signal to noise ration shifts too heavily towards "noise"). I also know that there are much, much, MUCH better machines that can be used, that get down to +/- 1ppb or smaller. Laser ablation is AWESOME, in both the historic and the slang sense of the word. I'm not sure how hospitals do their tests, and I do know that the iron in the blood can muck with the results of some elements, but for aquious and geological samples this is one of the easier questions to answer.

It also seems that the more the conspiracy theorists and "big pharma" haters yell the more others become biased in the opposite direction.

This is probably not true. What's probably happening is that researchers see the catfight and go "Okay, yeah, not getting involved, you guys have fun." Intense scientific debate can be a lot of fun for the participants, and is a necessary part of science, but it can be off-putting to those who are not deeply emotionally invested. What often happens is that moderate voices get driven out of the debate, and only the most rabid folks continue it. So it gives the appearance of increased hostility when in fact what's going on is that everyone's simply sitting back and enjoying the fireworks. And by "moderate" I don't mean in terms of the conclusion--I mean those folks who genuinely come at their conclusions from the data, and who aren't deeply emotionally invested in the result. A person can take an extreme viewpoint for moderate reasons in science. Confuses everyone when it happens, but it does happen.

 

[Estellea]

It is a shame that there are so many biased investigators when it comes to autism. It makes getting to the scientific truth a lot more difficult. It also seems that the more the conspiracy theorists and "big pharma" haters yell the more others become biased in the opposite direction. I wonder if they know that that they are their own worst enemies when it comes to gaining credibility?

Unless you want to cite some specific examples re: the bolded portion, that has not been my experience. There are some very biased investigators, true although fortunately they are the minority and cater to the minority of ASD parents who buy into the whole vaccinesdidit meme and 'autism can be cured if we just do enough voodoo on our children' meme. The two have significant overlap by the way. Unfortunately, there are some very deep pockets who support dodgy research to confirm their biases.

The vast majority of autism researchers are ethical and doing good science and many of these don't give a toss about the mercury/vaccine nonsense and just want to elucidate ASD aetiology, various differences in some ASD people as compared to the general population, risk factors, treatments and therapies to improve the quality of life for ASD people. Crap studies like this just annoy some of them for various reasons.

Este

 

[Dancing David]

Not sure why that is an issue? The PLOS journals are open access but still go through rigorous peer review.

Thanks, I will read more next time before commenting.

 

[Dinwar]

Thanks, I will read more next time before commenting.

Like I said, you're hitting one of the major issues in science just now--possibly the biggest in a few centuries. Differences of opinion are to be expected and embraced, and trust me, yours isn't the most extreme I've encountered!