Ask Stanford Med: Director of Stanford Autism Center taking questions on research and treatment
Among school-aged children in the United States an estimated one in 50 has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, according to a recent survey (.pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to raising concerns among researchers and parents about why the number of cases has increased, the findings underscored the need to do more autism research and to provide support and services for families caring for autistic children.
To help parents and others in the local community better understand the growing prevalence of autism and to learn about treatments and research advancements, the Stanford Autism Center at Packard Children’s Hospital will host its sixth annual Autism Spectrum Disorders Update on June 1. The event offers an opportunity for exchange between parents, caregivers and physicians and provides an overview of the center’s clinical services and ongoing autism research at the School of Medicine.
In anticipation of the day-long symposium, we’ve asked Carl Feinstein, MD, director of the center, to respond to your questions about issues related to autism spectrum disorder and to highlight how research is transforming therapies for the condition.
At the Stanford Autism Center, Feinstein works with a multidisciplinary team to develop treatments and strategies for autism spectrum disorders. In providing care and support for individuals with autism and their families, Feinstein and colleagues identify ways of targeting the primary autism symptoms, while also paying attention to associated behavior problems that may hold a child back from school or community involvement or seriously disrupt family life.
Questions can be submitted to Feinstein by either sending a tweet that includes the hashtag #AskSUMed or posting your question in the comments section below. We’ll collect questions until Wednesday (May 15) at 5 PM Pacific Time.
When submitting questions, please abide by the following ground rules:
- Stay on topic
- Be respectful to the person answering your questions
- Be respectful to one another in submitting questions
- Do not monopolize the conversation or post the same question repeatedly
- Kindly ignore disrespectful or off topic comments
- Know that Twitter handles and/or names may be used in the responses
Feinstein will respond to a selection of the questions submitted, but not all of them, in a future entry on Scope.
Finally – and you may have already guessed this – an answer to any question submitted as part of this feature is meant to offer medical information, not medical advice. These answers are not a basis for any action or inaction, and they’re also not meant to replace the evaluation and determination of your doctor, who will address your specific medical needs and can make a diagnosis and give you the appropriate care.
Previously: New public brain-scan database opens autism research frontiers, New autism treatment shows promising results in pilot study, Autism’s effect on family income, Study shows gene mutation in brain cell channel may cause autism-like syndrome, New imaging analysis reveals distinct features of the autistic brain and Research on autism is moving in the right direction
Photo by Wellcome Images
May 13th, 2013 at 9:57 am
A study published earlier this year shows that early signs of autism can be detected in infants as young as 6-months old. How early should parents, or medical professionals, be looking for symptoms of autism? And, how might early intervention lessen, or even eliminate, autism symptoms in children?
May 13th, 2013 at 5:48 pm
I recently read that social games, such as peek-a-boo, can be upsetting to babies exhibiting autism symptoms and that replacing these games with activities that are more enjoyable for infants can lessen the severity of the condition or alleviate it altogether.
Dr. Feinstein, what does related research show about using infants’ responses to social games as an early indicator of autism? And, can early interventions that address social deficits effectively treat the condition?
May 13th, 2013 at 6:11 pm
There seems to be a significant increase in the milder form of autism, which affects mostly men. Some researchers believe a mutation involving the gene TMLHE may offer clues on how to treat and prevent this form of autism. What role does genetics play in autism and is there strong evidence suggesting a single gene or specific group of genes are the cause of autism?
May 13th, 2013 at 10:23 pm
Many children with autism have sleep issues, such as waking in the middle of the night for several hours. Is the prevalence of sleep issues higher than with neuro-typical children.
May 14th, 2013 at 11:16 am
My son who will soon turn four was diagnosed with mild to moderate autism,and his sibbling whos younger is also presenting developmental delays.I do have other boys and none presented developmental delays,my question is will my youngest son develop.a mild form of autism or does he have a greater chance of a more severe type of autism?
May 14th, 2013 at 11:30 am
How meaningful are environmental factors, such as nutrition and exposure to toxins during pregnancy, in terms of autism risk?
May 14th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
I work with several children on the autism spectrum who experience what looks like a fight or flight response to sounds and/or unusual visual information (e.g., a bell or a sight of a bell will cause this response). Is there current research helping us understand this level of fear/anxiety… and how to alleviate it? It seems that medications and current remediation efforts can only touch the surface. Changing the environment to be low sensory and reducing exposure may help temporarily but are not long term solutions for quality of life as adults.
Thank you so much for taking questions!
Barbara Avila, M.S. RDI®
May 14th, 2013 at 5:40 pm
My 4 year old is very aggressive, is there any natural remedies, that might help. He doesn’t sit still to participate in activities, hoping to find something that helps.
Also, what is your take on the gluten casin free diet? My son has stomach issues, and we had the Ciliac testing, and nothing came up. Do you have any suggestions?
May 14th, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Would ike to know more about Asperger’s since it is part of the Autism spectrum.
May 15th, 2013 at 9:08 am
Do you think that the current, non- structured home or day care as well as the educational environment (noisy, chaotic classrooms as opposed to a quieter home environment) is exacerbating the incidence of autistic symptoms?
May 15th, 2013 at 11:12 am
Thank you for the opportunity to ask my questions:
Why has there never been an official study comparing the autism rates in fully-vaccinated and never-vaccinated children?
This is the most heated issue in pediatric medicine today. Members of the autism community have called for such a study for years, but health authorities refuse. If one in every 50 never-vaccinated children also has autism, the proof of no link would be there for all to see. With so many parents now too frightened to vaccinate, the study group is out there.
(And recently U.S. Congressman Bill Posey (FL) introduced a bill in the House calling for just such a study. Congressman Posey Introduces Bill Requiring Study of Autism Rate in Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated https://healthimpactnews.com/2013/congressman-posey-introduces-bill-requiring-study-of-autism-rate-in-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated/)
Why has there never been a study looking at the children who were normal, happy, and thriving until they suddenly lost learned skills and regressed into autism?
The late Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institutes of Health, was on CBS News in 2008 announcing that the vaccine-autism question is still open. She said we need to look at the children who got sick, the ones who were thriving and happy but who suddenly and inexplicably regressed into autism following routine vaccination. Five years later, that still hasn’t been done.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4088138n
Finally, why has there never been a study on the cumulative effect of the ever-expanding vaccination schedule?
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-arqv6t8VacY/T7QvOcTrpmI/AAAAAAAAD-U/EBqU4n3R0SE/s1600/VaxCDC.png
Vaccines are tested singularly but they given to children in batches of 6, 7, and 8 vaccines in a single doctor’s visit.
These are critical questions and more and more parents want answers. Autism has no official cause or cure. The numbers are horrific. Most frightening of all is the fact that there’s nothing a mainstream doctor can a new mother with a baby that was born healthy and is developing normally so that her child doesn’t also end up on the autism spectrum by age two.
Thank you for your time.
Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism
May 15th, 2013 at 1:23 pm
Why is autism in the DSM when it is not a mental illness? Since it’s a neurodevelopmental and metabolic disorder, why isn’t it in regular medical books and why don’t so many doctors not understand what it truly is and how it actually affects our children? Maurine Meleck, SC
May 15th, 2013 at 4:45 pm
A lot autism research focuses on identifying the cause of the condition or treatments for children. What about research related to the needs of adults with autism and interventions for them?
May 15th, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Thanks for all the great questions for Dr. Feinstein! We’re done taking questions for this round of Ask Stanford Med. Dr. Feinstein will answer a selection of your questions in future Q&A on Scope. We’ll let you know when his responses are posted.
May 16th, 2013 at 1:08 pm
When I went to medical school autism was something you were born with and the rate was 1 in 10,000.
Today, most affected children experienced a regressive event, which means they were developing along normally and then lost speech, social and cognitive functions.
When I went to medical school that was called an encephalopathy and we went looking for the cause, be it environmental or infectious.
Today, that does not happen. Children with Mitochondrial disease, Rett’s, etc they are all being told they have “autism” and to see a speech therapist or something else inappropriate.
For years in my New Mexico practice I thought I was running a genetics clinic at a university based on my case load because the real university blew all these cases off as “autism.”
I have seen children with clear and unequivocal mercury poisoning from living on super-fund sites, neuro-Lyme, Mito disease, etc.
I am insulted every time I hear the increase in numbers is do to better diagnosing. IT IS NOT.
I was there, I started medical school in 1976. These children were not there… they weren’t anywhere.
But I will tell you what I did see in medical school, I saw a young girl have a severe reaction - an acute encephalitis from receiving the DPT vaccination.
Today, I see an older group of patients that receive the HPV vaccine and develop Chronic Encephalopathic Syndrome (CES). They become autistic like in many areas, of course we call it AntiNMDA receptor encephalitis, or the like, but what is the cause?
We are all assured that whatever the cause is it isn’t the vaccine they received.
Yeah…right.
So, let’s just keep calling an environmentally triggered encephalopathy by the wrong name and call it a mystery for which there is no treatment.
Shame on us.