NEW STUDY - "Mitochondrial Autism" is Real; Vaccine Triggers Cannot Be Ruled Out

[link to www.huffingtonpost.com]

The December 1st issue of Time Magazine carries a special section on "The Year in Medicine," which mentions the case of Hannah Poling, the young girl with autism who received compensation from the federal vaccine injury program. Like many news accounts back then, Time has called the case "rare," because it involved an underlying dysfunction of Hannah's mitochondria, the little powerhouses within each cell that produce energy.

The widespread misconception that Hannah's case was "unique," and without any bearing on other autism cases, was promulgated by opinion leaders such as CDC Director Julie Gerberding and the newly rich vaccine inventor Dr. Paul Offit, (who told Newsweek that his share of the royalties from the vaccine was "like winning the lottery.")

But on Wednesday, a new chart-review study was published showing that "mitochondrial autism" is not rare at all.

"These and prior data suggest a disturbance of mitochondrial energy production as an underlying pathophysiological mechanism in a subset of individuals with autism," wrote the authors of the study, "Mitochondrial Disease in Autism Spectrum Disorder Patients: A Cohort Analysis." [link to www.plosone.org]

In fact, the authors wrote that mitochondrial dysfunction "may be present in a substantial percentage of children with ASD." (They did not mention prevalence in adults with autism).

I first reported on this phenomenon back in March, when I interviewed one the of the study's authors. Back then, I wrote that mitochondrial dysfunction was detected in 7-to-30 percent of people with autism, and that genetic mutations that might confer such dysfunction could be as common as 1 in 50 people in the general population.

Now, I freely admit that I do not understand everything written in this new study. But there are a few things that I think are worth pointing out.

REGRESSIVE AUTISM IS REAL

I have long held that there are many different subsets of autism cases. One such group is made up of children who were developing normally, only to regress later - typically between one and two years of age. Nearly all of the children in my book regressed into autism - a process that often began almost immediately after receiving multiple vaccinations.

Perhaps that is why the very idea of regressive autism has been cause for derision among many scientists, who insist that the parents were simply too ignorant to "notice" autism symptoms in their children earlier on.

But among the 25 children in the chart review, 14 of them, or 56%, suffered from "regression of previously acquired skills." This is a rate that is significantly above the roughly "one third of autistic children" in general who are reported to have regressed, the authors said. So then, not only is regressive autism real, it seems to be almost twice as common in cases of "mitochondrial autism," (the authors; words, not mine).


[snip]