Alert the Media: Yes, Autistic kids have a Novel Bowel Disease
2013 March
Editor's note: You've really got to check out and connect people to
this interview Andy Wakefield did with Arthur Krigsman, one of the
authors of the new journal article that confirmed unusual bowel
disease in children with autism. That, you no doubt recall, is what
the whole "discredited" Lancet paper was about lo these 15 years,
and millions of autism cases, ago. Sadly, the denial of this reality
plays out every day, including at
Loyola hospital in Chicago where a 14-year-old boy is currently
being treated as a psychiatric patient while his mother's pleas to
investigate his GI symptoms have so far gone unheeded. -- Dan
Olmsted
Thank you to Bob Moffit for the transcription.
DR. WAKEFIELD: Hi, I'm sitting here with my friend and colleague, Dr. Arthur Krigsman, who brings us some very exciting news from pediatric gastroenterology. Arthur, welcome to the show.
Thank you to Bob Moffit for the transcription.
DR. WAKEFIELD: Hi, I'm sitting here with my friend and colleague, Dr. Arthur Krigsman, who brings us some very exciting news from pediatric gastroenterology. Arthur, welcome to the show.
DR. KRIGSMAN; Thank you Andy.
DR.W: You've published previously in the area of inflammatory
bowel disease in children with autism. In a nutshell, what were
the findings of that paper?
DR. K: Well, in the initial paper published in early 2010
("Clinical Presentation and Histologic Findings and
lleocolonoscopy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and
Chronic Gastrointestinal Symptoms")
What we were able to show, was that, children with Autism who
had long standing gastrointestinal symptoms, like diarrhea,
constipation or abdominal pain, growth failure .. when those
children underwent colonoscopy .. the biopsies showed
inflammation. So that, these children were not just having a
bad day, they weren't children with nervous stomachs, rather,
they had a real organic disease that related to the symptoms
parents were complaining about.
DR W: Now that was wonderful
news in a way, because, what it lead to was the potential for
new treatments. If you found nothing, there was nothing to
treat. If you found something, then there was something you
could do to help these children.
DR K: That's a critical
point, because, the point of demonstrating there was
inflammation on the biopsies was so that you could then justify
treating them. If you find inflammation, then you have symptoms
present. Then it makes sense to try giving the patient an
anti-inflammatory drug .. and .. seeing if it helps their
symptoms. And that has been our experience.
DR W: Clearly, that approach has
worked for many, many children. So that's great news. But now,
really exciting news. You've taken it to a whole new level
using the most sophisticated technology available to do what?
DR. K: We subjected the
biopsies, the inflamed intestinal biopsies of autistic children,
we've subjected them to high-tech analysis, using the technique
of "microarray analysis", which studies the molecular components
that are produced by inflammatory cells. We are now looking for
the products, the molecular products of those cells .. and ..
the molecular products of those cells have distinct signatures.
DR W: So, the genes that are
switched on or switched off effectively
DR K: Correct, correct. Not so
much that it's a genetic disease.
DR W: That's a very important
point to make, isn't it? A lot of money has gone into pure
genetic research. That is not what this is.
DR K: Right, right.
DR W: This is saying ..these are
those that are part of the disease, these are the ones that are
switched on .. these are the ones that may be helping to drive
the disease process .. and .. these are the ones turned off ..
maybe protective for example.
DR K: Yes, yes. The paper
should not be interpreted as meaning that autism is genetic.
DR W: So, tell me a little bit
about the groups that you looked at?
DR K: We had our study group ..
the children with autism, chronic gastrointestinal symptoms, who
underwent clinically indicated illeo-colonoscopy were found by
the pathologist to have non-specific inflammatory prescence in
their illeum or colon. We compared this group to non-autistic
children who underwent colonoscopy and ultimately were not found
to have any diagnosis. The second control group was
non-autistic who had Crohn's disease confirmed on their
biopsy. The third control group was non-autistic children who
were found to have ulcerative colitis.
DR W: So, in other words, is
there an inflammatory bowel disease in these children? Number
one. And, number two .. is it different from the signatures in
known inflammatory bowel disease, such as, Crohn's and colitis?
Is that fair?
DR K: Yes, yes.
DR W: A novel disease?
DR K: A novel disease. Either a
novel disease .. or .. an emerging disease .. perhaps ...
DR. W: So, an early stage, for
example, say crohn's disease?
DR K: Yes, exactly.
DR W: What did you find?
DR K: Using microarray
technology .. what we found was .. the molecular products of the
inflammatory cells in the autistic kids was not normal. The
normal patients .. when you took those bowel biopsies and you
took a look at the variety of different molecules that were
produced by those cells on the biopsies, they cluster in one
area. When you took the biopsies of autistic children with G.I.
symptoms and inflammation on biopsies .. they clustered in a
second area .. and .. when you took the bowel biopsies of
non-autistic crohn's and colitis patients .. they tended to
cluster in a third area .. over-lapping each other. What was
very interesting was that .. although the autistic children
biopsies clustered in their own region, there was significant
overlap with the crohn's and ulcerative colitis. But, virtually
no overlap at all with the normal non-inflamed, non autistic
children.
DR W: Now tell me, did you look
at different areas of the bowel or were you looking at just one
area?
DR K: We were looking at both
illeum, terminal illeum and the colon.
DR W: And you found similar
findings?
DR K: Yes, we found the colon
biopsies that were inflamed were just as dissimilar to normal
tissue as the inflamed illeum biopsies were to normal illeo
tissue.
DR W VOICEOVER:
"So .. what this is telling us is
there is a large number of genes that are behaving differently,
that are switched on or switched off in children with autism ..
when compared to other control groups"
DR W: Fascinating findings. I
mean here we are some fifteen years on from the original work
and confirmed beyond doubt there is an inflammatory disease that
may have unique characteristics in these children with autism.
DR K: The pediatric team at Wake
Forest was exceptionally helpful .. that's what really enabled
us to provide data that is very, very meaningful.
DR W: They must feel immensely
reassured. That the open-minded gastro-enterologists who went
into this, provided the samples you needed to test our
hypothesis .. and .. now a very important publication coming
out.
DR K: Correct .. and .. .the
parents of course, the parents of these children who've always
been saying this for so long. They feel very gratified and ..
again .. their observations are being validated.
DR W: They's been saying this
for years .. and .. they were absolutely right.
DR K: The issue of bowel
disease, inflammatory bowel disease, got to caught up with
political issues, public health issues and controversies,
financial issues .. that it poisoned the whole concept. The
idea there might be an inflammatory bowel disease that's unique
to these children was tossed aside. Primarily by people in the
media that influenced the desire of scientists to pursue this
avenue of thought.
DR W: So Arthur, in summary,
fascinating new finding, confirmation that there's a bowel
disease in children with autism, with gastrointestinal symptoms
.. and .. they have all the appearances of being either new or a
precursor of something like crohn's disease or colitis.
Yes the more you understand about the roots of autism and the ASDs the madder you get.
However the damage HHS et al is doing to us is at least two orders of magnitude greater than the neurodegenerative trauma and death it brings us. HHS et al are politically blessed at the highest political levels, far above the executive, and given permission to inflict this damage. Bringing this mess to justice is probably an impossible dream; I will settle for stopping autism and the ASDs being inflicted on our kids and us.
ONLY WE can stop autism and we do not need HHS and the pack of political criminals to do this. Stopping all "vaccination" is a great start. Please tell your friends, neighbors and pregnant women how to stop autism.
Posted by: Lou | March 15, 2013 at 02:49 PM
Posted by: Theodore Van Oosbree | March 12, 2013 at 01:28 PM
Posted by: Shell Tzorfas | March 12, 2013 at 12:11 PM
Posted by: W Ford | March 12, 2013 at 12:00 PM
“Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent”
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452/rr/635200
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 12, 2013 at 05:10 AM
Posted by: Jennifer | March 12, 2013 at 01:42 AM
Posted by: moon batchelder | March 11, 2013 at 06:22 PM
He supposedly died of pneumonia. But he had no fever. They attributed his pneumonia to cytokines. They also hypothecized that he might have died of kidney failure.
To our surprise, after he died, the pathology report said essentially that he had major intestinal disease. We'll never know exactly what that was. But we do know that our observations were correct. Gastroenteologists wouldn't touch Erik with a ten foort pole. One of these people (doctors?) refused to give us a follow-up appointment after he had discovered severe vitamin D deficiency and zinc deficiency that required zinc supplementation 20 times the allowable daily dose.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | March 11, 2013 at 05:17 PM
Posted by: Patricia | March 11, 2013 at 04:19 PM
This is clearly political and I hope this paper pushes the medical field to putting aside politics and treating these medical conditions.
Posted by: Dying on the vine | March 11, 2013 at 03:35 PM
It's hilarious, if you think about it, how they're trying to regroup and save face. They have decided it's fruitless to try to continue denying the reality of bowel disease occurring so frequently in autistic children, there are just too many thousands to continue denying it with a straight face. And so they're permitting their in-house researchers to claim the credit for "discovering" its existence.
Posted by: cia parker | March 11, 2013 at 10:32 AM
Posted by: Debra | March 11, 2013 at 08:30 AM