Help With Autism

Autism Speaks paired up with the Marcus Autism Center in Georgia for the Fifth Annual Walk for Autism Speaks. The event, which took place at the , had 15,000 participants who raised $500,000 for the two organizations. Both organizations are dedicated to autism advocacy, research, and providing resources to families with autistic children.

The executive director of the Marcus Autism Center pointed out that in Georgia “1 in 98 children is diagnosed with autism.” In other words, autism is the fastest growing developmental disability in the United States. While that statistic can be scary, autism news about the sheer number of people who are willing to help out and donate money to research, therapy, and family services is a bright spot.

According to ABC News, a new study that links brain waves to autism has emerged into the field of science. The study took two groups of children; one group had an increased risk for autism because they had a sibling with autism and the other of children with no link to autism. Each group of children was given a test that measures their brainwaves. Scientists are hopeful that this new experiment will forever change the way that autism is detected among children.

Looking at the part of the brain that controls language and social interaction, scientists found in the group of babies with no link to autism that their neurons had high activity to connect those parts of the brain. This autism news found that babies with a link to autism showed less of a neuron connection in these parts of the brain. This study concluded that science can now determine with 80-pertcent accuracy whether a child is more at risk for autism.

Last Wednesday, the Virginia House passed legislation that would change history as we know it. The 11-year struggle to impose autism-related treatment coverage under certain healthcare plans has finally seen its victory day. With a 74-24 vote, the bill presented a landslide win, causing parents of children with autism to rejoice statewide.

Now, families can bask in the comfort of knowing that their children would now receive adequate care and coverage for autism-related treatments at an affordable price. The new autism information mandate will require companies that employ more than 50 people to provide such care to their employees. Annual benefits for behavioral analysis cover up to $35,000 for these families. Finally, parents of children with autism will receive a much-deserved financial break.

In 1993 Jenny McCarthy began making a name for herself by posing for Playboy magazine. It wasn’t long after that the blonde starlet became a household name not just in the United States but around the world. Her celebrity has been marked by an odd sense of humor that stands in stark contrast to her status as a sex-symbol, making her brand of performing rather unique.

In 2005 her son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism and she has been an outspoken opponent of vaccinations ever since. She’s participated in several fundraising activities to raise awareness of what she believes to be a leading cause of autism. She’s even written a book about autism entitled Louder than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism. She’s also the author of several articles on autism and is well known for her opposition to vaccinations and her support of chelation therapy as a treatment for autism.

In this week’s autism news, according to a new study, people who have a certain change in one of their chromosomes are up to fourteen times more likely to develop autism or an autism spectrum disorder. Doctors and researchers call the specific change a “deletion” and say that the deletion is in chromosome 17. However, not all people with the deletion in chromosome 17 have autism. The chromosomal change also points to other disorders.

The other disorders indicated are autistic spectrum and schizophrenia. But again, everyone with these disorders may not have the deletion. Some doctors say this is just another in a long list of genetic indicators for autism and ASD. The study was published on November 4 and was the product of detailed and rigorous research by geneticists and doctors. The study can be found in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

In an unprecedented ruling, the family of Hannah Poling has won a case in which the family sued for autism-related vaccine damage. The Poling family will receive more then $1.5 million up front, as well as $500,000 for each year of care. According to sources close to the case, the settlement could end up being in excess of $20 million of Hannah’s lifetime.

Much autism news has been made concerning the potential link to vaccinations, but this case is rather unusual. After receiving vaccination for nine different diseases, Hannah’s parents recognized immediate changes in her behavior; Hannah started displaying signs of autism, ran a fever, wouldn’t eat and having tantrums. The government recognized that the vaccines were the result of her injuries, but that isn’t the whole story. Hannah had a rare, unknown mitochondrial disorder which was aggravated by the vaccines. According to doctors, this disorder in turn brought on the autism. Nobody knows how many other children have this or a similar mitochondrial disorder, but this case certainly opens the door for more settlements moving into the future.

Autism typically develops early in children, but it can be quite difficult for researchers to identify the disorder. Since communication is one of the key skills affected by the disorder, there are few reliable means of diagnosing autism in children and infants. Doctors and scientist continually look to eye movements as one of the best ways to target autism early. Last week he highlighted a new study that linked autism with erratic eye movement, and today are new articles on autism reporting on a study that further strengthens the link between staring patterns and autism.

According to the researchers from UCSD, babies around one-year-old may stare at geometric patterns instead of other children. Conversely, the line of vision of unaffected children is typically trained on people. As with previous research correlating eye patterns and autism, the team of UCSD researchers is excited by the prospect of using eye-tracking technology for autism assessment.

Over the last several weeks, autism news headlines have been by Dr. Wakefield—from the retraction of his highly influential paper linking autism and MMR, to the revocation of his license by the U.K. medical register. Due to unethical practices, including drawing blood from children at a birthday party and other invasive procedures, Wakefield has been largely discredited in the medical community. However, several people still espouse his controversial views.

Wakefield’s vendetta against MMR vaccines began in 1989, when he put forth several theories linking the vaccine with various disorders. Since then, all of these claims have been disproven by other medical sources. Originally, Wakefield had tried to show a correlation between the vaccines and Crohn’s disease, but to no available. In the years following the publication of his autism study, there has been a resurgence of measles in the U.K.—going from 56 in 1998 to 1,300 in 2008—and around the world.

Last week we posted on the guilty verdict of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the man who had headed a study over a decade ago that linked autism with MMR vaccination. Earlier today there was more breaking autism news, as the Lancet medical journal officially retracted the paper by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues. In lieu of the recent controversy, ten of the 13 authors who had worked on the original study redacted its conclusions.

The retraction comes after a regulator looked into the methodology that was used in amassing the study’s data. Although Dr. Wakefield has been found guilty in the case, the retraction only looked at how the research was conducted, not whether the study was correct or not—though the Lancet did refer to the research as “false.” Since its original publication, a litany of medical experts has rejected the findings of the study and state the MMR vaccinations are not a cause of autism.