·
Highly
subjective, or ineffective, rating scales for autistic behaviours
·
Lack
of biomarkers, or any other marker, to target a specific sub-types(phenotypes
of autism
·
Very
small sample sizes and often amateur execution, meaning the results cannot be
replicated
I think one
of these problems has a ready solution, at least for verbal primary school children with ASD.
Assessment Week
Last week,
Monty aged 10 with ASD, had assessment week at school. The academic subjects he participates in, are
Maths, English and Science. We have
chosen to skip Geography, History and French.
Monty already has another second language.
Following
the tests at school, I decided to make a test of my own. I stopped all of my therapies and waited to
see what would happen and if anyone would notice.
The first
therapy I had to reintroduce was bumetanide, which in his case makes him far
more aware of himself and his surroundings; it makes him more “present”. The reason for this was, for the first time
in years, on day one, he forgot to go to the toilet and peed in his pants. A coincidence? I think not.
Also, when I told him that I was going out, instead of the expected “see
you later, Dad” I got “see you Monday”.
Then the
next day having restarted bumetanide we drive to school. I hear lots of relevant comments like “There’s a Peugeot
lion taxi car”, “The soldier has a gun, that fires bullets”. The day before there were no comments at all.
But the day
at school was not so good; all the stereotypy with his hands and fingers
returned, so while the day was not hard for his assistant, she said it was hard
for Monty. He was commenting, like the
things he could see through the window of his classroom, but work was not
good. Handwriting degenerated to
oversized sloppy writing, that did not follow the lines on the paper. In the afternoon,
I reinstated NAC, just in time for the arrival of his assistant who works with
him at home, following an ABA-style programme.
During the rest of the afternoon, all stereotypy with his hands and
fingers disappeared, just as expected.
Today, I met
the school teacher and not only were his grades As and Bs, but he finished his
tests much faster than most of the other children. This is remarkable, because he has never
received any real academic grades before; the teachers did not think it fair to
give him grades. I should point out that
Monty is at least 2 years older than his classmates; but then he was pretty
much entirely non-verbal until he was 4 years old, so he has lost a lot of learning time.
The relevance
of all this is that while psychological and behavioral testing is very
subjective, basic cognitive testing, as practiced in schools around the world,
is very well understood, fair and easy to replicate.
With
children who are verbal, can read a bit, write and do some very basic maths, a
simple cognitive test, measuring these basic skills, assessing both accuracy and
speed would produce a pretty good surrogate index of cognitive functioning. You could easily use such an index to measure
the effectiveness of a drug in autism.
If large scale trials were done in Special Schools, this could work
really well. One week the class is on the
placebo and the next week on the trial drug.
Then you could have trials with several hundred participants.
I think
coming up with measurements for things like “social withdrawal”, as is currently
done, is far too esoteric. Let’s go back
to the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic).
Nootropic drugs
I find it
more than a coincidence that several of the autism drugs I am investigating,
happen to be classed as nootropic.
Nootropic drugs are cognitive enhancers.
I have
demonstrated that as you improve autism, you increase cognitive function; but
perhaps as you improve cognitive function, you improve autism. If this were true, it would open up new
avenues for investigation.
There is an
underground scene of cognitive enhancers, and if you probe the internet, you
will readily find what works and what does not.
On the serious research front, here is a recent paper
that is very comprehensive:-
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