About this blog.

My son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at 24 months. I created this blog to bring meaning to the often-confusing label. Sometimes I have answers. Other times, just more questions.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Quick Hit

Psychology today muses: Not Quite Autism - At the Borderland of ASD. (Hat tip or...er....belly rub...to GoodFountain.)

It's all there: intersecting spheres, blurry lines and a slew of vaguely defined conditions. I've resigned myself that this is all there is until and unless epigenetics makes a quantum leap.

Have a great holiday!

8 comments:

Kris said...

I saw this on a special needs board. I noticed SPD is not on here, maybe because it "doesn't exist"? I have come to accept it is what it is, Alex has come a long way due in part (I think) to early intervention starting when he was 18 months old and I hope he continues to move "down the graph" so to speak to become a "quirky adult".

A little boy just 3 years old said...

haha. post all you'd like, it's not mine and I thought it was good stuff personally!

Nyx said...

I'll tell you something weird that happened to us last week. As you may know, I have pretty much eschewed the "biomedical" stuff. But last weekend, had to take T to the ER with respiratory distress (reactive airway disease/asthma-like/wheezing/respiratory rate over 60). they put him on prednisone. Within 2 days he did things I have NEVER seen before. I saw true joint attention for the first time EVER. I didn't even suspect prednisone for a day or two because he had been doing so well lately I just thought we had hit a new plateau. But then it hit me, could it be? I googled it, and lo and behold, I am not the only one reporting this. He's off it now, it was just temporary, but I am torn about what to do now. I checked out some books from the Emory Health Sciences library and it seems pretty clear that autism really does involve chronic inflammation, just like asthma. So it's quite plausible a steroid would be beneficial. But could it really cause that dramatic and immediate an effect? I don't know, but I am not letting it drop either. I am suspicious about the folks who are all focused on behavioral analysis.

Laura said...

Kris - Consider the source "Psychology Today" - it's all subjective and gets at the constellation of psychological symptoms rather than the substance or nature of the underlying neurological condition (maybe SPD, maybe no).

ALBJ3YO - oh yeah, the one I posted was the 2nd or 3rd in the series. And it is interesting.

Nyx, I hope he's doing well now! That sounds like an ordeal. I have experience with allergy/asthma with Jeremy. We had Jeremy on a steroid when he was about 13 months after the first time he tried egg. You know what else steroids are effective for: clearing up ear fluid, which can affect hearing, and, in turn, language. As for inflammation/autism link, color me skeptical, but that's just me. If Hannah Poling is "exhibit A", I would counter that she's an example of brain damage caused by febrile seizure.

Nyx said...

Actually, the articles I have been struggling to read about inflammation don't seem to have anything to do with Hanna Poling, at least not that I can tell. There has been a series of articles by neurologists at Johns Hopkins, Andrew Zimmerman and Carlos Pardo, that report findings of inflammation in autistic brain tissue. Is there work somehow sketchy or discredited in some way that you know of? I have really been trying to figure this out and I am sincerely puzzled. This stuff is in a 2008 compendium edited by Zimmerman for a series called Current Clinical Neurology, the editor of which seems to be a professor at Harvard. Other contributors to this volume include Martha Herbert and Simon Baron-Cohen, ... I checked this out from the library in the hopes of only getting "legitimate" information, but you think it is not? Or you think perhaps this information has been invalidated somehow? It is a couple of years old ....

Nyx said...

ps - it took some doing, and I am still a little uncertain, but I THINK that I have finally found something to confirm that this information is "mainstream" (I hope?) ... I found a paper on immune dysfunction etc. in autism from the Autisnm Society of America, which seems to have Margaret Bauman from LADDERS on its advisory board, and the paper was authored by people from the UC Davis MIND Institute. Here's the paper: http://www.autism-society.org/site/DocServer/EH_asd_and_immune_system.pdf?docID=4750.

Kris said...

Nyx, some doctor or other along the way told us about the studies at Johns Hopkins and that many do believe that chronic inflammation has something to do with autism. Problem is, do you really want your child on prednisone (or any steroid) long term? So frustrating...

Nyx said...

Kris, you hit the nail on the head, of course. I DONT want him on prednisone, or at least I don't think I do ... but I guess I do want to know more. I mentioned this in my blog, but the Johns Hopkins FAQ suggests that prednisone wouldn't affect the type of inflammation they saw, I'm not sure why. I can't just let it go though. I at least want to understand what is going on. For one thing, what is causing the inflammation? Is anyone trying to figure that out? I guess part of me thinks that if I could understand what is happening better, I would be in a better position to decide what if anything to do.