Autism Treatment Success

A potential new treatment for autism, which had previously passed animal and healthy volunteer tests, has now been shown effective in treatment of people with autisitc disorders. There are currently no other known treatments for this spectrum of disorders.

The treatment consists of giving patients inhaled Oxytocin – a hormone previously shown to increase feelings of trust and correlate with certain social behaviour traits in animals.

The France based trial treated just 13 adults with Aspergers/Severe Autism, randomly allocating them to receive either placebo followed by Oxytocin or Oxytocin followed by placebo. Treatment outcome was based on the ability of participants to focus on the 'socially informative' regions of faces such as the eyes and to play a virtual ball game.

Although there is clear excitement about the study, criticisms include the short half life of the inhaled Oxytocin and the currently unmapped side effect profile including problems of lactation and sexual arousal.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/1002...s.2010.73.html