My name is Parth Desai, a Florida resident at St. Pete High. Florida families are grossly underrepresented in the studies and birth registries that track childhood outcomes of prenatal exposure to medication and folate. For example, Florida families have low representation in the National Children’s Study; the National Pregnancy Registry for Atypical Antipsychotics; The North American Antiepileptic Drug Pregnancy Registry, and no representation in the CHARGE Study of environmental exposures; the prospective NEAD Study (Neurodevelopmental Effects of Antiepileptic Drugs); or the national EARLI Study (Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation).

This summer, I am working on this issue as an intern for the national FEND-Folate Study sponsored by Georgetown University Medical Center (IRB # 2009-162). “FEND” stands for Fetal Exposure to Neuroactive Drugs. Please help us expand awareness and accelerate understanding of fetal exposure to neuroactive medications and folate by participating in this 5-minute, anonymous and encrypted survey. The FEND Study would like you to be our collaborator and help us disseminate this online, national risk assessment survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s......YjRA_3d_3d.

Would you please read the following information and forward the survey to parents within your organization? Thank you for your cooperation! Please call the principal investigator Dr. McVearry (202-687-4966 or fendstudy@georgetown.edu) if you have any questions.

Knowledge Gap: Human Studies of Prenatal Exposure to Neuroactive Medications and Folate

As a medication class, anticonvulsant drugs rank fifth among the most prescribed drugs in the United States, with over 56 million prescriptions written in 2004 (IMS Health). Additionally, 48 million women of childbearing age took antiepileptic drugs in survey year 2000, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics reported by Epilepsy Society of America. While several human studies explicitly link autism and prenatal exposure to anticonvulsant medications, this literature has three crucial limitations. First, human studies are primarily limited to valproate exposures. Second, human studies are predominately based on case report and retrospective enrollment methods, not prospective methods. Finally, epidemiological data based on prenatal exposure are not currently available for this medication class, and the population attributable risk (PAR) for autism has not been investigated.

The Big Picture

Advances in autism diagnosis, treatment and FDA policy will be made more rapidly if we understand autism not as an incurable disorder, but as a set of treatable – and, in cases of chemical exposure, preventable – illnesses that have genetic and environmental contributors. Understanding both genetic and environmental causes of autism will help prevent autism from occurring in high-risk children and offer treatments that target both the different symptoms and different causes of autism spectrum and pervasive developmental disorders. Our goal is both basic and ambitious: to have every Florida parent who has a child with a diagnosed, or suspected, autism spectrum or pervasive developmental disorder take this 5-minute, anonymous online survey. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s......YjRA_3d_3d.

But, what do I know ? Except that I have definite vestiges remaining in my adult brain of my childhood autism bi-lateral temporal parietal hypoperfusion, a neurological condition.

I would like clear diagnostic criteria distinguishing between autism and “comorbids” like eccentricity or giftedness, though (speaking of Fitzgerald).

And kudos to the unflappable Happé.

it’s an almost impossible question to answer – it’ll vary between families, cultures, doctors…

“in fact, he seems to function in a group better than a lot of the AS kids, even though he can’t speak well”

thanks for mentioning this. It’s difficult to express how difficult life can be for us, that many think deserve booting off of the spectrum.

THis is alrady underway. Cognitive psychologists have in the path few months linked Gender Identity Disorder with ASD.

http://imfar.confex.com/imfar/.....r4222.html

Anorexia has also been recently linked to ASD with some psychiatrists suggesting anorexia should be a sub category of autism:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18208640?

This ever widening net continues to catch all the wrong kinds of fish:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17615427?

and:

http://www.autismwebsite.com/c.....05cp13.htm

Michael Fitzgerald has made a comfortable living diagnosing the dead and the neurodiversity crowd embraces his ‘retrospective’ diagnosis of famous historical and currently admired figures such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates as having Asperger Syndrome. On the other hand Fitzgerald has also retrospectively diagnosed Adolph Hilter with Asperger Syndrome.

The expanding universe of the definition of autism cannot does not permit the neurodiversity crowd to claim Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein as being ‘one of us’ and reject Jeffery Dahmer and Adolph Hitler as being ‘one of us’.