Characteristics for Autism

Children with Autism often appear to be developing relatively normally until the ages 24-30 months.When they start to fall behind other children it is often mistaken as a learning disability.

There are several common characteristics amongst children with Autism covering Repetative Behaviour, Non-Interactions with those around them,Little or No Communication skill and lack of Creativity.

It is difficult to catagorise these characteristics as they mostly overlap with each other. Obviously if you are concerned about your child you must seek professional help as this is only a guide and not a diagnosis.
Autism checklist

Repetative Behaviour

Children with autism often develop repetative behaviour such as rapping fingers, spinning toys rocking backward and forwards.

Interaction with those around them

A child with Autism will quite often give the appearance of being deaf by ignoring those around.They would rather play alone than with other children. Quite often they will not allow anyone to cuddle them or show any afection.

Communication Skill

Little or no communication skill is evident.The inability to point at objects or mime to make themselves understood when verbal skills are poor.

Creativity

Unlike other children the child with autism does not have the ability to play imaginatively and will only play with certain toys, often just spinning them around. They may even become unusually obsessive about a particular object.

This is an interesting study.

Probiotics and Autism - 2007
John Scott reports and Professor Glen Gibson comments of the research.

It is well known that autistic children often suffer from gastrointestinal discomfort, bloating and diarrhoea or constipation, and it has been discovered recently that the intestines of autistic children tend to contain a higher number of the Clostridium histolyticum group of bacteria than is found in healthy children.

Clostridia are well-known producers of toxins, including neurotoxins, which may contribute to gut disfunction, may also have a systemic effect and could potentially be a contributory factor in the development of autism.

Researchers at the Food Microbiology Sciences Unit at Reading University have developed a probiotic specifically to reduce the levels of clostridia and promote 'friendly' bacteria instead, and they recently mounted a trial to assess precisely what effects this would have on autistic children.

Forty children, aged 4 to 8 were selected and half were given Lactobacillus plantanum in a powder, once a day, whilst the rest received a sham 'probiotic'.

As this was a 'blind' study, none of the participants knew which product they were getting, but it appears that the reduction of autistic symptoms in the children who were taking the L. plantanum was so remarkable to their parents that, when the time came in the study for the groups to switch and for those who had been taking the real probiotic to begin taking the sham product, the parents refused to accept anything other than the genuine probiotic!

Inevitably, the trial collapsed due to the large number of drop-outs and no firm conclusions could be drawn in a 'scientific' sense, although a very clear 'result' may be obvious to many!

A new trial is to be mounted that should answer some of the remaining questions, such as whether the obvious improvement in both concentration and behaviour was due simply to the fact that the children felt better, and were therefore more able to concentrate and behave more normally, or whether this was due to some other change brought about by the probiotic.

Source: The Scotsman, 5 September 2006

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