Maternal Antibodies Linked to Autism | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views
www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36379/title/Maternal-Antibodies-Linked-to-Autism/
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WIKIPEDIA, KEN HAMMOND (USDA)In 2008, Judy van de Water from the University of California, Davis, discovered a group of autoantibodies—those that trigger immune responses against the body’s own molecules—that are especially common in mothers of children with autism.
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“Given that, at present, only between 15 and 20 percent of children with autism have known causes—mainly genetic and infectious mechanisms—this will be a major advance.”
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“It would allow mothers to plan,” said van de Water, by enrolling their children in educational programs that promote social skills from an early age.
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team is now working to address these issues, trying to identify the specific parts of the six proteins that the antibodies stick to, determine how they affect the developing brain, and understand how they might be used to predict autism risk. Van de Water and Amaral are consulting for Pediatric Bioscience, which is creating a predictive test based on the results.
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the team’s colleagues Melissa Bauman and David Amaral, also from UC Davis, injected eight pregnant rhesus monkeys with antibodies purified from mothers with autistic children.
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next step is to come up with a therapeutic to block the antibodies—not just to pick them up, but to do something about it,”
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The parents have been surprisingly supportive,” she said. “But the autism field has been fraught with false alarms, so we want to be really careful.”