PMID 10921511

Short-term Benefit From Oral Vancomycin Treatment of Regressive-Onset Autism

Sandler et al.

Background

This study focuses on children with regressive-onset autism. Regressive onset autism usually occurs in children before 2 years of age, with symptoms including loss of language, social and play skills. A subset of children who develop regressive-onset autism disorder have been reported to develop autistic symptoms after taking certain anti microbial medication. Antimicrobial medication falling under the clostridial plant genus may disintegrate the lining of the intestinal organs in the body, allowing neurotoxins to enter the gut, which the experimenters believe may be causing regressive-onset autism. The parents of these children also report their children having chronic diarrhea.

Introduction

Goal: To analyze the effectiveness of vancomycin as a treatment for regressive-onset autism due to antimicrobial medications within the clostridial plant species.

Methods

Eleven children were included in this experiment, 10 boys and 1 girl with regressive-onset autism and diarrhea. The children ranged from 43 to 84 months in age.

The participants were compared to the normal functioning of a child in the same age group using the Developmental Profile II. Results of the comparison showed that the participants expressed deficits in communication, socialization, and self-help. Improvement was examined by evaluators in a blind evaluation. Stool, urine, and blood lab tests were also done to evaluate results.

Results

The Wilcox Signed Rank determined that the group experienced improvements in both communication (Z-score=-2.9 P=.003) and behavior (Z-score=-2.9 P=.003). Baseline measures showed no significant correlation between baseline communication or behavior.

There were no long-term effects of the vancomycin treatment on the participants, neither positive or negative, as the improvements wore off within 2 weeks after discontinuing treatment but ere were also no noticeable side effects.

Conclusion

Vancomycin short-term treatment is effective in reducing symptomatology of regressive-onset autism in the participants involved. The results show a possible connection between the flora in the gut and how it affects the brain in certain regressive-onset autistic children with diarrhea.

Discussion

The shortcomings of the long-term effects of vancomycin on regressive-onset autistic children may be due to a variety of factors. A few ideas are that the Clostridium botulinum bacteria may be spore-forming and thus survived the vancomycin antibiotic treatment, or that the dosage was not strong enough to completely eliminate the bacteria, leading the remaining bacteria to possibly become resistant to the antibiotic.