Autism Polypill Version 5

Agnieszka's KetoForce and C8 are new additions, last time it was Tyler's Agmatine as additions to the Full Polypill

I recently updated my autism Polypill. It is now the fifth version, so it is becoming ever more personalized to one specific case of autism.  I added caprylic acid C8 and KetoForce Beta Hydroxybutyrate.

The full Polypill version 5 is here:

   https://epiphanyasd.blogspot.com/p/polypill-for-autism.html

I do feel that I am getting near the final version. I already am pretty sure what is going to be added in the sixth version. There are one or two potentially clever ideas in this blog that I have not yet developed.

After my first year of autism research my doctor mother thought the result was good enough to stop, but I persevered and some further improvement did come. She was supportive of the concept but rather surprised it was possible. I think I have now achieved most of what is possible, which took an additional five years.

Having recently been reviewing the expected prognosis in longitudinal autism studies, including the one up to 22 years of age by Catherine Lord in the US, I think the result speaks for itself. In long term studies the remarkable improvement that rarely does occur, takes place by the age of eight. Verbal skills at the age of two is the best predictor of outcome at 19 years old.  I only started with my Polypill at the age of nine, when we were five years into trying to teach prepositions and maths was at the level of struggling with single digit addition and subtraction. Today at 15 years old, maths is at the same level as neurotypical 13-year-old classmates; so, we can say his maths age is 13.

I did suggest years ago to the French Bumetanide researchers that they measure IQ to show the impact of their therapy.

I think that in severe autism, and also Down Syndrome, huge strides forward are possible just by raising IQ.  We saw from the 15-year French study that the entire lower group, representing 80% of the total, had an IQ far less than 70 when they age out of school. An IQ of 70 is the threshold for MR/ID and affects 2.3% of the population.  Many of those French had IQs less than 40. 

Many parents do not like the term Mental Retardation (MR), so they made a nicer term Intellectual Disability (ID), which to me sounds like you might struggle playing chess, rather than dressing yourself and tying shoelaces.

Much MR/ID clearly is treatable.  That makes what is left of autism much easier to deal with. It makes the impact of any expensive 1:1 therapy much more substantial and therefore cost effective.

Recall we also have 81 other types of MR/ID that have been identified and are treatable.

        http://www.treatable-id.org/

As part of another project, I recently updated an old chart from this blog that shows the change in my autism index over time, including 6 years of the Polypill. I started treatment with Bumetanide on 17 December 2012. That was the sharp drop in the black line, followed rapidly by NAC and Atorvastatin. 

The big spike in the black line is the effect of the summertime allergy “stopping” the cognitive effect of bumetanide and producing the self-injurious behaviour of the same kind as the first big spike in the orange line.

The orange line after December 2012 is my forecast of what would happen, including a spike in bad behaviors likely to be triggered by puberty.

The spike in the black line at 13.5 years was a PANS-like episode that only lasted a couple of weeks, and was immediately treated using prednisone.

Heading towards 16 years old, Monty is still above the blue area, which we could call the “nerd cloud”. This is where you will find all those very mildly autistic, fully verbal people that now receive a medical or educational diagnosis of autism. Back in 1970s, 80s and 90s these were the nerdy kids at your school, who generally got by without any medical diagnosis/label. A small percentage will subsequently have attempted suicide.

On my chart typical development is not zero on the autism scale.

What is “normal” changes, typical kids develop their sense of “cool” group behavior before puberty and this continue until they become parents or just busy and fully employed. Then cool gradually fades and by 30 years old a socially awkward Aspie type really is not so different from a Dad who is juggling his job, commuting and his family obligations. There is no time to be cool.

I think around 18 is the peak difference between an NT young person and an Aspie.  Once the Aspie gets to College/University and meets more fellow Aspies life should get much better.  Find a job in a University or NASA and you will do just fine.

My therapy goal is just to keep heading towards zero on my scale. Entering the nerd cloud would be a great success; all that effort to reach the point many people with today's "autism" start from!

The IQ difference is already overcome. If you can do algebra, your IQ is way above 70.

Optimizing adaptive behaviour is the remaining goal. As the French longitudinal study and Catherine Lord from Cornell University highlighted in their studies, being fully verbal is a big part of enhancing adaptive behavior.  If you can be chatty, many aspects of life and functioning automatically get much easier.

So, in Monty’s case the emphasis has to be on expressive verbal communication, which is his weak point.

Fortunately, the additions in version 5 of the Polypill (Caprylic acid C8 and KetoForce BHB) and the expected additions in Version 6 will target this area. 

I did also write about critical periods and sensitive periods in the treatment of autism. It is clear that while it is never too late to start therapy, the sooner you start the bigger the effect will be. This is another reason why I doubt I will ever get to Version 10 - the clock is ticking.

Time is indeed a great healer, so even just Version 5 for another five years should continue to help Monty close the gap with typical people.

At another visit to the dentist last week when Monty had anaesthetic in his rear lower jaw, which apparently is the most difficult for a dentist treating a person with autism, the dentist was visibly relieved “it was exactly as you said it would be … he was better than my typical patients”.  That is the result of Polypills version 1 to 4 from 2012 to 2119; it is not down to parenting as the dentist believes. We did practise with a syringe and a drill at home, but it really was not needed. Monty understands why the process is necessary and what the steps involved are and so he is happy to sit back and open wide. Ten years ago this was not the case.

According to Catherine Lord at Cornell, based on her longitudinal studies from diagnosis up to adulthood, verbal skills at the age of 2 are the best predictor of outcome at 19 years old. Monty's verbal skills at the age of 2 were zero.

Unfortunately over 60% of the children she followed from 2 years old end up with a very poor outcome in adulthood - severe MR/ID, the adaptive skills of a four year old  and drugged up on psychotropic meds.  As in the 15 year long French longitudinal study of autism we looked at, the measured IQ falls over time. Anyone still think severe autism should not be treated? Perhaps they need their heads examining?

The optimal group of 10% do well, with an IQ shooting up to 111 (average IQ for typical people is 100) and OK with an adaptive functional age of 101 months (8.5 years old). Of them, 63% had a job and the great majority were not on psychotropic meds.  

It appears that in Lovaas' flawed ABA research he selected the kids that completed his trial from this Optimal 10% group. So yes, 50% did great, but they were already on track to do pretty well.  We learned from Dr Siegel that he weeded out the less able kids who did not respond to his therapy during the trial itself. You might think that all his research should now be rescinded.

LA ASD = less able ASD  (62% of the group) have IQ less than 70<70 div="">

MA ASD = more able ASD (38% of the group) with a subset called Optimal = the top 10%

Source: Catherine Lord's Presentation at UC Davis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-XczxdYM4E&t=14m36s

I always wondered why American Psychiatrists decided to keep relaxing the boundaries of autism. There was no rational reason to do it, because it makes all the data incompatible and so comparisons meaningless. One good reason would be to hide the appalling outcomes of severe autism (DSM3 autism, Strictly Defined Autism etc), by adding more and more much milder autism the overall outcome looks quite acceptable.

Dr Lord is a psychologist and she comments in her presentation that today the prognosis results would look much better, as if that is a good thing. Being of logical engineer origin, I would counter that this is a nonsense. The results today would be exactly the same for those kind of kids; just that a sample in 2019 of 200 kids with newly diagnosed autism would include 100 who would not have been given a diagnosis 25 years ago when Dr Lord started her study. Nobody would have even sent those fully verbal quirky two year olds for evaluation.

For the final word on prognosis, we might recall from this earlier post

          Autism Biology, Comorbidity, Mortality and Better use of Existing Research 

that 

"Autistic adults with a learning disability were found to die more than 30 years before non-autistic people."

Time to customize your personalized medical therapy for autism?  If your child was fully verbal at two years old, then you might not need to bother.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that after 480 posts, this blog is now giving a fairly complete picture of autism. The features provided by Blogger/Google make it hard to navigate this blog and the very useful index by label is no longer available. Only a few people have read the entire blog.

It could be reorganized as follows.

• Prevalence of the many Autisms
• Prognosis
• Evidence from clinical trials and case studies that shows improvement is genuinely possible and so it is worth your while to commit serious time to the process
• Lots of science blah blah 
• Precision medicine leading to a personalized therapy 

Unfortunately the science blah blah does get very detailed and does lose many people.  Biology is not complicated like math, there is just an awful lot of it and it remains only partially understood, so it changes.  Most people can follow the science, if they are willing to spend enough time, but you need to know that genuine improvement is indeed possible.  Some people are lucky and find their type of autism is similar to someone else's who has already found an effective therapy.

At some point I will get someone to write the java script to make a better index to the blog, so at least I can find things. 

Hopefully Version 6 of the Polpill will include two steps forward.