Specific Association Patterns Between Brain Glutathione Levels, Myelination, and Functional Connectivity in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The sample was small: 30 adults with autism and 27 controls were analysed, and the authors estimated the power to detect the glutathione difference at 0.545. The left temporoparietal glutathione finding did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. The pregenual anterior cingulate region was excluded because of unreliable data quality, so the study could not test all planned brain regions. Parental socioeconomic status differed between groups and was not matched, although sensitivity analyses adjusted for it. Medication use was not controlled, and adults with autism often have other psychiatric conditions. The study compared groups at one time point, so it cannot show that glutathione changes cause myelination or connectivity changes. The authors note that some participants with autism had high emotion recognition scores, so group-level associations may reflect mixed subgroups rather than one mechanism.

The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding was from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Do not read these brain associations as evidence that any treatment helps adults with autism. The study measured brain chemicals and connectivity in two groups; it did not test a treatment, and the main glutathione difference did not survive multiple-comparison correction.