Hot off the presses...

I don’t work ALL the time.  For giggles last night I went into Web of Science to find out the latest on autism research.

The ten most recent articles were pretty much what one would expect, or at least what I would.  Seven of the ten articles addressed children, continuing the child-centric emphasis in autism research and practice.  I noted one article on oral health in children which found that in the sample cohort the level of dental caries was actually lower than that of the control group.

Sarnat, H., et al. (2016). "Oral Health Characteristics of Preschool Children with Autistic Syndrome Disorder." Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry 40(1): 21-25.

The more fascinating aspect of this topic is the fact that many individuals with autism are orally defensive.  Routine dental appointments are thus incredibly miserable for all involved and many individuals on the spectrum need to be anesthetized to get through it.

Another article followed an au courant line of neuroscience research.  This study of 17 children  with ASD found deficiencies in both myelin and axonal development supporting the current belief that autism is related to aberrant neural connections.

Hardan, A. Y., et al. (2016). "A proton spectroscopy study of white matter in children with autism." Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 66: 48-53.

A perpetual interest of mine, sensory processing was addressed through analysis of the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (HSPS), a parent report on reaction to stimuli and processing.  The researchers found good internal consistency for the tool and concluded that there was a relationship between atypical sensory processing and internalizing problems.

Boterberg, S. and P. Warreyn (2016). "Making sense of it all: The impact of sensory processing sensitivity on daily functioning of children." Personality and Individual Differences 92: 80-86.

There were no studies of adults in the most recent publications, but I noted an interesting cultural study from China.  This piece made clear that autism is highly stigmatizing in that country and that those with autism are primarily identified via children and savants (that is as somewhat extreme stereotypes).

Tang, L. and B. J. Bie (2016). "The stigma of autism in China: an analysis of newspaper portrayals of autism between 2003 and 2012." Health Communication 31(4): 445-452.

However, the article that really grabbed my attention was this one:

Ling, Q. and M. V. Tejada-Simon (2016). "Statins and the brain: New perspective for old drugs." Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 66: 80-86.

As you are likely aware, statins are tic tacs for the 21st Century as people seem to be popping handfuls of them.  Just to refresh your memory, the 2013 Report of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association set the new guidelines for the treatment of blood cholesterol to reduce CVD.  In so doing, this report replaced what is called the ATP III guidelines of 2002 which had previously set the standard for over a decade as to what levels of cholesterol to maintain and what drugs to use in order to accomplish this.  There had been a lot of compelling research since ATP III and the new 2013 Report swept all of the old dogma away with very revolutionary ideas, especially in reference to statins.

Basically, the report promoted: 

1.  Doing away with LDL targets.  For many people their LDL target was the ONLY thing they talked with their doctor about so this was a dramatic change.
2.  Putting patients on High Intensity Statins when LDL is greater than 190 mg/dL.  This is a relatively high number and usually indicative of individuals with hereditary cholesterol conditions.
3.  Using high intensity statins for those with a history of cardiovascular incidents.
4.  Using medium intensity statins for those between the ages of 40-79 with LDL between 70-189 mg/dL and certain 10 year risk factors, or for people with diabetes.
5.  Discontinuing all drugs except statins for prevention of CVD.  
6.  Promoting statins for Individuals with pristine cholesterol but hereditary risk for CVD.

Thus, the report tossed out everything BUT statins from the CVD prevention toolkit.  What the report was basically saying is that statins lower cholesterol AND reduce cardiovascular disease while all of the other treatment modalities merely lower cholesterol but don't affect CVD rates.

 The inevitable conclusion from the report is that statins reduce CVD though the mechanism for prevention is not as yet understood.  Cholesterol is no longer considered the key to heart disease, which is a huge change for all of healthcare and especially nutrition.

It makes sense in may ways because though cholesterol was always vilified there were many anomalies that were hard to explain.  For example, why do many people with normal levels of cholesterol still die of CVD?  Likewise, why do certain individuals with sky-high cholesterol never get heart disease?  This new protocol explains away this puzzle by essentially contending that cholesterol is associated with heart disease, but does not cause it.

So how are statins related to autism?  The research in question explains that in some studies treatment with statins reversed cognitive disabilities and even improved behavioral deficits in animals with autism.  The mechanism for this action appears to be related to alterations of isoprenoid levels, a substance which serves as a lipid attachment for a variety of intracellular signaling molecules.  Consequently, it appears that statins have benefits beyond their role in CVD prevention.  The authors hypothesize that statins offer the possibility of a new treatment modality for a wide range of neurological conditions, including autism. 

This research sounds momentous but the reality is that the phenotype of autism is tremendously diverse and thus it is unlikely that this treatment approach (or any other) will be efficacious to any but a certain segment of the population.  Studies such as these do not get me as excited as they did in the past.  It is simply another piece of a very large puzzle.

Anyway, this is a slice of the latest research and I have breezed through it.  There is no doubt that I will return to this same parlor trick when next I need to find something to write about.