19 Search results

For the term "Harvard".

Excerpts:

“We found a functional architecture along the GBA that correlates with heterogeneity of ASD phenotypes, and it is characterized by ASD-associated amino acid, carbohydrate and lipid profiles predominantly encoded by microbial species in the genera Prevotella, Bifidobacterium, Desulfovibrio and Bacteroides and correlates with brain gene expression changes, restrictive dietary patterns and pro-inflammatory cytokine profiles.”

“We also show a strong association between temporal changes in microbiome composition and ASD phenotypes. In summary, we propose a framework to leverage multi-omic datasets from well-defined cohorts and investigate how the GBA influences ASD.”

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  • June 26, 2023

Excerpts:

“Children with autism spectrum disorders often display dysregulated immune responses and related gastrointestinal symptoms.”

“Our study provides mechanistic insights into why children exposed to heightened inflammation in the womb might have an increased risk of developing inflammatory diseases in addition to neurodevelopmental disorders.”

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  • December 7, 2021

Press Release from Harvard Magazine:

“Inflammation link for autism
A neuroimaging study has shown that the brains of young men with autism spectrum disorder have low levels of translocator protein, a substance that appears to play a role in inflammation and metabolism.

This discovery by a team of HMS researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital provides an important insight into the possible origins of autism spectrum disorder.

This developmental disorder, which affects one in fifty-nine children in the United States, emerges in early childhood and is characterized by difficulty communicating and interacting with others. Although the cause is unknown, growing evidence has linked it to neuroinflammation.

One sign of neuroinflammation is elevated levels of translocator protein, which can be measured in the brain using positron-emission tomography and anatomic magnetic resonance imaging.

The research team used these imaging tools to scan the brains of fifteen young adult males with the disorder. The group included both high- and low-functioning participants with varying degrees of intellectual ability. As a control, the team scanned the brains of eighteen non-autistic young men of similar age.

The scans showed that the brains of the young men with the disorder had lower levels of the protein, compared with the brains of non-autistic participants. In fact, those participants with the most severe symptoms of the disorder tended to have the lowest expression of the protein.

The brain regions found to have low expression of the protein have previously been linked to autism spectrum disorder and are thought to govern social and cognitive capacities such as processing emotions, interpreting facial expressions, and empathy.

The researchers point out that the translocator protein has multiple complex roles, some of which promote brain health. Adequate levels of the protein are, for example, necessary for normal functioning of mitochondria. Earlier research has linked malfunctioning mitochondria in brain cells to autism spectrum disorder.

Zürcher NR et al., Molecular Psychiatry, February 2020

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  • February 19, 2020

Excerpts:

“The likelihood of the child having ASD more than doubled among children with food allergy compared with those without food allergy; children with respiratory and skin allergy were also significantly more likely to have ASD, but at a lesser magnitude. While no sex difference was found for food allergy, boys with ASD were significantly more likely than girls with ASD to have respiratory and skin allergy.”

” It may be that GI dysfunction, seizures, and sleep disorder, in addition to food, respiratory, and skin allergies, are medical comorbidities that characterize the immune-mediated subtype of ASD.”

“In the Discussion section of their article, Xu and colleagues review other aspects of immune dysfunction reported in ASD, including abnormalities in peripheral immunoglobulins, imbalance of T-cell subsets, and increased levels of proinflammatory cytokines in postmortem brains of patients with ASD. Considering the significant association between food, respiratory, and skin allergy in children with ASD reported by Xu and colleagues, in conjunction with numerous studies documenting aspects of immune dysfunction in patients with ASD and specific animal models of ASD, evidence continues to mount that an immune-mediated subtype of ASD should continue to be pursued and defined.”

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  • June 8, 2018

Excerpt:
“CONCLUSION: Among children born EP, those who had top quartile concentrations of IL-4 and/or IL-10 on postnatal days 21 and/or 28 were more likely than their peers to have low scores on components of the NEPSY-II, OWLS-II, and WIAT-III assessments, as well as identification as having an ASD.”

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  • May 12, 2018

Excerpts:

“…several large scale epidemiological studies have recently linked prenatal air pollution exposure with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD).”

“We have demonstrated that prenatal exposure to DEP in mice, i.e., to the pregnant dams throughout gestation, results in a persistent vulnerability to behavioral deficits in adult offspring, especially in males, which is intriguing given the greater incidence of ASD in males to females (∼4:1).”

“DEP exposure increased inflammatory cytokine protein and altered the morphology of microglia, consistent with activation or a delay in maturation, only within the embryonic brains of male mice…”

“Consistent with this hypothesis, we found increased microglial-neuronal interactions in male offspring that received DEP compared to all other groups. Taken together, these data suggest a mechanism by which prenatal exposure to environmental toxins may affect microglial development and long-term function, and thereby contribute to the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.”

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  • May 31, 2017

Excerpt: “Oxidative stress, brain inflammation, and microgliosis have been much documented in association with toxic exposures including various heavy metals…the awareness that the brain as well as medical conditions of children with autism may be conditioned by chronic biomedical abnormalities such as inflammation opens the possibility that meaningful biomedical interventions may be possible well past the window of maximal neuroplasticity in early childhood because the basis for assuming that all deficits can be attributed to fixed early developmental alterations in neural architecture has now been undermined.”

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  • June 29, 2016

Excerpt:
“Then, using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we demonstrate a tight linkage between binocular rivalry dynamics in typical participants and both GABA and glutamate levels in the visual cortex. Finally, we show that the link between GABA and binocular rivalry dynamics is completely and specifically absent in autism.”

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  • December 16, 2015