Retinal alterations in a pre-clinical model of an autism spectrum disorder.
Elisa Maria Guimarães-Souza, Christina Joselevitch, Luiz Roberto G Britto and 1 others
PMID 31011411WHAT IT FOUND
Male adolescent mice exposed before birth to valproic acid had smaller retinal light responses and retinal protein changes.
They also spent less time in the open centre and showed less social interest. This is an animal model, not a human therapy result.
Key findings
01Prenatally valproate-exposed male mice showed anxiety-like open-field behaviour: total movement was similar, but they spent less time in the centre and more time at the edge.
02The retinal response had a smaller maximum a-wave, while the b-wave was not significantly different.
03Retinal measurements showed lower synapsin-1, FMRP, GABA and GAD, and higher mGluR5.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The work was done in mice, so it cannot show how human autism or therapy outcomes would change. It tested a prenatal valproic acid exposure model, which is only one environmental route to an ASD-like phenotype and does not represent all autism. Only male pups were used, so the results do not tell us what happens in females. Some animals died or were excluded during retinal recording, so the retinal test used small groups: 6 exposed and 9 control animals. The paper does not state how animals were allocated to groups. The paper did not test a therapy or a human sensory assessment, so it cannot support a clinical treatment decision. The paper says causality cannot be established because the retinal roles of these proteins are not fully known.
Declared interests
The supplied text lists funders but no author competing-interest declaration. Funding was from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these mouse retinal changes as evidence that vision or sensory therapy helps autism. It used prenatally valproate-exposed male mice, and no human patients or therapy outcomes were tested.