lassesen 12:33 am on September 30, 2017  

Autism Microbiome

This is part of a current blog arc looking at related conditions that often seem to be in the family of people with CFS/FM/IBS.  A reader forwarded me a link to A Single Species Of Gut Bacteria Can Reverse Autism-Related Social Behavior In Mice [2016]. The species was Lactobacillus Reuteri — the bacteria ascribed to being the source of B12 in humans.  CFS patients usually have zero of it — hence the need for B12 supplements and injections.

This post is dedicate to a local CFS suffer who has a child with autism.

“We cultured a strain of L. reuteri originally isolated from human breast milk and introduced it into the water of the high-fat-diet offspring. We found that treatment with this single bacterial strain was able to rescue their social behavior,”

Autism and the Microbiome

  • The Gut Microbiota and Autism Spectrum Disorders[2017].
    • “Gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are a common comorbidity in patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. Many studies have shown alterations in the composition of the fecal flora and metabolic products of the gut microbiome in patients with”
    • “Accumulating evidence demonstrates that gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, such as abdominal pain, gaseousness, diarrhea, constipation and flatulence, are a common comorbidity in patients with ASD (Chaidez et al., 2014).”
    • “The gut microbiota of infants who were delivered vaginally resembles their mother’s vaginal microbiota, which is dominated by Lactobacillus, Prevotella, or Sneathia spp., and the gut microbiota of babies who were born by Cesarean section is similar to their mother’s skin microbiota, which is dominated by Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, and Propionibacterium spp. (Dominguez-Bello et al., 2010).”
    • “Compared with the gut microbiota of children without ASD, the gut microbiota of children with ASD is less diverse and exhibits lower levels of Bifidobacterium and Firmicutes and higher levels of Lactobacillus, Clostridium, Bacteroidetes, Desulfovibrio, Caloramator and Sarcina (Finegold et al., 2002, 2010; Adams et al., 2011; Finegold, 2011; De Angelis et al., 2013).”
    • “Children with autism who present GI symptoms have lower abundances of the genera Prevotella, Coprococcus, and unclassified Veillonellaceae than that found in GI symptom-free neurotypical children (Kang et al., 2013).”
    • “Fecal samples from children with ASD also have higher levels of the Clostridium histolyticum group (Clostridium clusters II and I) compared with samples from unrelated healthy children (Parracho et al., 2005).”
    • “The reduction of Clostridium yields significant improvements in children with ASD (Sandler et al., 2000). “
    • “Additionally, children with ASD present alterations in their levels of Bifidobacterium, Prevotella, and Sutterella (Wang et al., 2013).”
      • “and demonstrated a low relative abundance of Bifidobacterium spp. and the mucolytic bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila in children with ASD [11].
    • “found a significant increase in the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio in autistic subjects relative to normal subjects. They also found that Candida was two times more abundant in autistic individuals than in normal individuals (Strati et al., 2017).”
    • ” the Autism Diagnostic Interview (ADI) restricted/repetitive behavior subscale score has associated with the amount of Desulfovibrio spp. (Tomova et al., 2015). “
  • Distinct Microbiome-Neuroimmune Signatures Correlate With Functional Abdominal Pain in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder[20176]
    • “A significant increase in several mucosa-associated Clostridiales was observed in ASD-FGID, whereas marked decreases in Dorea and Blautia, as well as Sutterella, were evident. “
  • New evidences on the altered gut microbiota in autism spectrum disorders[2017].
    • ” We found a significant increase in the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio in autistic subjects due to a reduction of the Bacteroidetes relative abundance. At the genus level, we observed a decrease in the relative abundance of Alistipes, Bilophila, Dialister, Parabacteroides, and Veillonella in the ASD cohort, while Collinsella, Corynebacterium, Dorea, and Lactobacillus were significantly increased. Constipation has been then associated with different bacterial patterns in autistic and neurotypical subjects, with constipated autistic individuals characterized by high levels of bacterial taxa belonging to Escherichia/Shigella and Clostridium cluster XVIII. We also observed that the relative abundance of the fungal genus Candida was more than double in the autistic than neurotypical subjects, yet due to a larger dispersion of values, this difference was only partially significant.”
  • ” autistic subjects with gastrointestinal disease harbor statistically significantly (p = 0.031) higher counts of C. perfringens in their gut” [2017]

Microbiome Treatment

  • “According to a cohort study, oral supplementation with Lactobacillus acidophilus twice daily for 2 months decreases the D-arabinitol levels in the urine of children with ASD and improves their ability to follow directions, as demonstrated through comparison with data collected before the treatment (Kaluzna-Czaplinska and Blaszczyk, 2012). “
  • “ase study showed an ASD boy with severe cognitive disability was treated with VSL#3 (a multi-strain mixture of 10 probiotics) for 4 weeks. The treatment relieved the GI symptoms and improved the autistic core symptoms (Grossi et al., 2016). “
  • ” The prebiotic galactooligosaccharide (B-GOS) increases the levels of Bifidobacterium spp. in an in vitro gut model, as demonstrated through the analysis of fecal samples from children with ASD and controls (Grimaldi et al., 2017).”
  • “treatment with Bacteroides fragilis reduced gut permeability, altered the composition of the gut microbiota and decreased ASD-like behaviors in a rodent model of ASD (Hsiao et al., 2013). “
  • ” the proportion of Bacteroidetes/Bacteroidales significantly increased and the proportion of Bifidobacterium significantly decreased [after Vitamin A supplementation]” [2017]

Bottom Line

Autism microbiome is different from the CFS microbiome, there is evidence that it may be seeded as an altered microbiome very early in a child’s life.