For many desperate patients, over-the-counter chelation treatments used for conditions including autism, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, among others, offered hope for a cure. Now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is …
Autism
1 in 5 Kids With an Autistic Sibling Show Subtle Symptoms Too
It’s not easy being the brother or sister of an autistic child. “Typical” siblings sometimes feel embarrassed by or responsible for their autistic sib, or may feel jealous of all the attention he gets. Now researchers have found …
Whooping Cough Cases May Break Record in California
With nine deaths and 4,017 illnesses reported, California is on track to break a 55-year record in pertussis, or whooping cough, infections — a highly contagious upper respiratory illness that affects children in …
The Mysterious Case of Donald T., Autism’s First Child
The Atlantic has an absorbing tale in the current issue about the first person ever diagnosed with autism. The man, now 77, is named Donald Gray Triplett and the story’s authors tracked him down in Mississippi where — 74 years after he was institutionalized for exhibiting introverted behavior — he spends his days playing golf, …
A Five-Minute Brain Scan Tracks Kids’ Development and May Spot Disorders
Researchers have designed a scanning test that can measure the maturity of the brain, a technology that may someday help doctors determine whether children are developing normally and identify those who might be at risk of …
Using Videos to Help Diagnose Autism in Babies
The causes of autism are still unclear, but evidence is building that early intervention — before age 1 — may help mitigate or even prevent the developmental disorder from occurring in the first place. Making such early treatment more possible, researchers now report a promising new way of detecting autism in infants as young as 14 months.
Doctor behind vaccine-autism link loses license
It took nearly six months but the General Medical Council (GMC) in the U.K. has pulled Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.
Wakefield is the researcher who nearly single-handedly fueled parental concerns about the link between vaccines and autism. In 1998, he published a paper in the medical …
No benefit to delaying childhood vaccinations
In all the time I’ve covered health and medicine issues, nothing has been more polarizing than the debate over childhood immunizations. And while scientific evidence continues to mount against a causal connection between vaccines and developmental disorders such as autism, there was one concern voiced by some parents that seemed to …
Many parents remain wary of vaccines
Despite the lack of scientific evidence linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, roughly one in four parents still believe that vaccines may put some healthy children at risk for developing an autism …
Mercury not found to be higher in blood of children with autism
Mercury—a potent neurotoxin—has long been the whipping post of parents-turned-autism-activists, scientific evidence be damned. But a study published online yesterday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives casts further doubt on the tenuous connection between the heavy metal and the devastating brain disorder. In what is …