Serum and cerebrospinal fluid immune mediators in children with autistic disorder: a longitudinal study.
Carlos A Pardo, Cristan A Farmer, Audrey Thurm and 4 others
PMID 28070266WHAT IT FOUND
Most immune markers in blood did not differ between children with autism and typical controls.
EGF was higher, and sCD40L was more often above detection limits, in autism, but both were unstable over time.
Key findings
01EGF and sCD40L were the only serum analytes with a significant group difference.
02EGF and sCD40L had low within-subject stability across repeated serum samples.
03In the autism group, serum and spinal fluid immune mediator levels were generally not related to each other.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Healthy children did not have spinal fluid samples, so spinal fluid findings cannot be compared with a control group. Many serum immune markers were not stable within the same child over time, so a single blood sample may not reflect a lasting level. Many values were outside the assay detection range, so some results were reported as detected or not detected rather than as exact concentrations. The study did not match groups on cognitive function, and it did not analyze relationships between immune markers and clinical characteristics. The sample included children aged 2 to 7.99, so findings may not apply to older children. The study tested many markers at once. This can produce false positives even after correction.
Declared interests
Funding came from the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program and the Bart McLean Fund for Neuroimmunology Research. No author conflict-of-interest declarations are included in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autism is a systemic inflammatory disorder or that EGF and sCD40L are useful clinical biomarkers. Most serum immune mediators did not differ between groups, and the EGF and sCD40L levels were unstable within the same child over time.