Nom de guerre, Mon frère - Manchopathy

Today’s post had better be a quick one.  The desk research in the background is getting complicated and I have just ordered a 900 page book on Human Physiology, so as not to spout complete nonsense.  Worse still, a couple of days ago, I received in the mail, a big brown envelope from Tokyo with a juicy report on the use of Ceredist, a TRH analog.  It is 20 pages long, and the bad news is that 18 pages are in Japanese.  The good news is that I had expected all 20 pages to be in Japanese.

To business.   You are slowly being introduced to the cast members of this blog.

The star of course is “Monty”, aged 9.

His supposedly “typical” big brother, aged 12, is going to be called “Ted”.

Head of Applied Research, part-time biker and Speech Therapist will be called Dule (“Doolay”)

Last week I decided that it was time for some good old fashioned primary research, to test a hypothesis that I had formulated.  This is what we presented to the in-house ethics committee, for approval:-

1.    Many children with autism exhibit what appears as sensory overload.  On hearing a moderately loud sound, they will cover their ears, almost as if in pain.  Bright lights, darkness, certain smells, even touch can trigger similarly strong reactions.  Entire books have been written documenting these odd behaviours, but I never read an explanation for them.

2.    In my trawl through the literature, I noted that a disorder with surprisingly similar symptoms has been documented -   Hypokalemic sensory overstimulation

This disorder manifests itself as an overwhelming feeling of sensory stimulation.  But then disappears 20 minutes after a dose of oral potassium.  A related, but much more severe, disorder that causes temporary paralysis also exists -  Hypokalemic periodic paralysis

3.    The recommended daily amount of potassium for adults is 3,500mg.  A typical banana contains 400 mg of potassium. A dissolvable tablet of Potassium Citrate contains 500mg of potassium.  So 500mg is a safe dose to experiment with.

4.    A laboratory experiment is proposed using an MP3 file of a baby crying. Dule will first establish a baseline volume (VB) at which Monty will cover his ears. Monty will be sitting in a fixed position in the lab. This test will be repeated over a few days to see if VB varies.

 

5.    Then the subject will receive 500mg of oral potassium and wait for 20 minutes. The MP3 file will be played again while he is sitting in the identical test position. Dule will crank up the volume and note the new threshold volume (VT).

 

6.    The same test will be repeated with Ted and Dule as subjects.

 

Prior to providing Dule with the oral potassium solution, Peter suggested to Dule that he would perhaps prefer if the test did not show up anything worthy of further investigation.  Since that would again drive Peter crazy, that no serious scientist had noticed this, done something about it and published their work.

Here is the raw data from the test:-

 

Volume * at which sound becomes disturbing
	7-Mar-13	8-Mar-13		11-Mar-13		11-Mar-13
						after K+
Monty	9	9		9		16
Ted				23		26
Dule				21		23
* sound level on digital display of Philips mini HiFi
room is about 20 m2, subjects were 2.5 m from HiFi unit

 

Discussion

As you see, Monty is far more sensitive to sound than both Ted and Dule.  Monty experiences a sharp increase in his capacity to cope with sound stimulation after drinking the potassium.  Ted and Dule show a small increase in capacity, that may be just down to measurement tolerance/error. (Dule was testing himself, after all)

Mon Dieu!  It looks like we have to do a serious follow on study with more subjects and some flashy equipment.  Worse still, now I have to be able to explain scientifically why this is happening !

 

The cause is related to something called VDCC (voltage dependent calcium channels) these are like little valves that open to let  Ca²⁺ ions in or out; they are misbehaving.   Recall that Bumetanide works in a similar way by triggering NKCC1 and NKCC2 (Sodium, Potassium, Chloride Cotransporters) to let in/out  Cl^- ions.  The subject of misbehaving ion channels has already been given a fancy name by scientists, its Channelopathy.  Now I was wondering how I was going to explain my use of French in this post.  It's all about the English Channel or should I say la Manche, and so we'll call it Manchopathy.