--Is there any evidence that autistic kids had tick bites as infants? What about the European angle, where autism rates too are up, but where there's no Lyme disease (or at least it's far less prevalent)? --

Pamela Weintraubauthor of Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic and Senior Editor, Discover Magazine 

Lyme is extremely prevalent in Europe: not a theory but a documented fact. Please just check the peer reviewed medical literature to confirm. In fact, the genospecies in Europe are if anything more neurologically invasive than the genospecies in the US.

There is mounting a great deal of anecdotal evidence from doctors who treat Lyme that it has, at least, worsened cases of extant autism. Many of the Lyme doctors feel that autism can be Lyme-induced --note the conferences on this topic already held on the East and West coasts.

Lyme could be just one factor. After all, Lyme is just one of several infectious pathogens communicated by the same tick --it is not the only one known to cause neurological problems, and tick infections are hardly the only infections known. There are chemicals and toxins to be considered as well, as these authors emphasize.

Perhaps it all accumulates to create a certain "load" --that is my thought. The autism explosion comes from somewhere, after all.

Pam Weintraub
Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic
http://www.cureunknown.com

I'd love to learn more about the postulated infectious agents and pollutants in this study. Maybe your next post?

Breaking up these 2 paragraphs since they have important info in there that this NEURO LYME patient can NOT comprehend or read as is! Bettyg

The incidence of autism by age six in California has increased from fewer than nine in 10,000 for children born in 1990 to more than 44 in 10,000 for children born in 2000.

Some have argued that this change could have been due to:

o migration into California of families with autistic children,

o inclusion of children with milder forms of autism in the counting and

o earlier ages of diagnosis as consequences of improved surveillance or greater awareness.

Hertz-Picciotto and her co-author, Lora Delwiche of the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences, initiated the study to address these beliefs,

analyzing data collected by the state of California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) from 1990 to 2006,

as well as the United States Census Bureau and state of California Department of Public Health Office of Vital Records, which compiles and maintains birth statistics.

--------

Thanks Pam for another informative post; this time on AUTISM, and I've read parent's stories of so many kids with CHRONIC LYME disease and/or co-infections!

I agree with other poster, to have a follow-up on her specific question.

Pam, great job too of having shorter paragraphs for us neuro lyme folks! We love you for that! xox

Do you think the rise in cases of autism in California could be due to the fact that people with autism or autistic traits are likely to be working in the computer and tech industries, like this article suggests:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

I think it's plausible that the rise could be due to the fact that people with autism or autistic tendencies have more mating opportunities than geeks of previous generations.

I am glad to see that the quest to discover what is causing the increase in autism is turning away from genetics to environmental causes. Even though some genetic glitches have been associated with autism, the key is finding what is causing these genes to be damaged in the first place.

That said, are scientists still looking in all the wrong places? There is substantial scientific evidence that prenatal ultrasound is not safe. Animal experiments in the '60s and '70s led an international group of scientists to predict in the early '80s that ultrasound exposure could cause neurological, behavioral, immunological and hematological changes -- all of which have mysteriously emerged among the human population over the past two decades.

Before laboriously checking hundreds of possible neurotoxins, how about investigating the prenatal ultrasound exposure of autistic children? It could be that the damage is done not by household cleansers, pesticides or ticks but in obstetrical offices and diagnostic imaging centers. Prenatal ultrasound may well be the common denominator that has made autism a global phenomena affecting millions of children in industrialized countries, crossing racial and class boundaries.

Pre natal ultrasound is also what has saved countless lives by detecting problems in time to correct them or prepare for them upon birth.

I think they need to take a long hard look at the Mercury issue again. Most doctors take a simplistic view of toxicity. That is, they look at the direct effect of the toxin to tissue at high doses. They don't look at things such as damage to the immune system, or other enzyme systems. Perhaps once the mercury load gets to a certain point, the immune system gets dysfunctional and all of these infections that are normally fought off start having effects. Or perhaps the mercury messes with the immune system in the GI tract, and the causing secondary toxicity due to GI pathogens or leaky gut syndrome. Or perhaps its just not safe to give so many vaccines at once and the immune system gets confused and "broken". While they certainly tested the immunological effects of single vaccines, I don't think they tested the cumulative or combined effects of the 20-30 odd shots kids get these days. There are lots of angles to look at here...

Of course autism isn't a direct genetic disorder. Genetic disorders don't increase in incidence at the rate autism did in one generation... There clearly is an environmental, infetious, or iatrogenic component here. Remember "pink disease"...