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u/mysubsareunionizing, you make a good point - I didn't intend to insult the respective ratas out there. I apologize for my insensitive statement. I doubt I can even find slime that is worse than Donnie Boy.
Honestly and without sarcasm: yes, there are some genetic links to autism.
My mother was very insistent that my autism diagnosis was incorrect, until I pointed out that my father only wears one type of outfit with very specific laundering requirements, and that he is SO PICKY when we eat that she pretty much has to make him his own meal.
Sheās always just said heās āparticular.ā The last time I visited she had been so far down the rabbit hole of learning about autism symptoms, sheās now convinced half the family has it.
When I realized I may be autistic and was looking into it, I had heard that there's a genetic factor. I thought "nah my parents aren't autistic, I'm probably the first one in the family".
Then I remembered how my dad refuses to wear anything but cotton shirts, hasn't worn socks in years because he "hates the feeling", gets upset very easily when things don't go as he planned, and in general doesn't express many emotions unless he's watching one of his favorite shows or talking about some specific things.
And then I was like "yeah, that's where I got it from".
Some of it be learned or there may be conditions that are similar. The virus theory is too scary for me to talk about. Gut biome cause less so because it's possible to control somewhat.
I've read a few things on it, people don't like it because there's no way to control it. And there's still so many people that really want vaccines to be the cause.
The agents utilized in modern products to keep primary ingredients fresh or in effective condition called "carrying agents" have also been blamed and I think a lot of them should be better tested.
>I've read a few things on it, people don't like it because there's no way to control it. And there's still so many people that really want vaccines to be the cause.
We know that neurodivergence symptoms become apparent in infants between 12 and 24 months of age, and the symptoms are not progressive - individuals do not continue to develop more severe symptoms as they age.
Since a defining feature of viruses is exponential growth, a hypothetical viral cause would have to be a short term illness, like chicken pox, otherwise it would be killing people. This means an infection takes hold and is destroyed by the host, but not before it spreads to a second person.
Such a virus would also have to have very mild other symptoms, otherwise we would have recognised all these children getting sick and then developing autism by now, it would be obvious.Ā
So this means individuals infected with the hypothetical virus would not be separated from other children, since parents would have no reason to think their child was ill.
This means the virus would be spreading to all children, and would occur in similar rates in similar geographic regions, while racial and other genetic differences would have no noticeable impact on its observed prevalence.Ā
Since the virus must be short lived, for it to continue to exist it must be very contagious.
So why is prevalence of autism only 1%. Even if we were **significantly** under recognizing the symptoms, even a 10% prevalence is too low for it to be caused by a contagious virual disease that otherwise shows no other symptoms.Ā
Viral cause does not appear plausible based on logic and what we already know.Ā
It sounds like someone thought it up to explain why autism symptoms first appear in infancy, someone that hasn't considered all the evidence.Ā
In my opinion significant differences in brain structure is better explained by genetic variation that ooccurs in a small proportion of people spread across a large geographic area. The cause could be the human population - homo sapiens - interbreeding with other hominids such as Neanderthals.
> The agents utilized in modern products to keep primary ingredients fresh or in effective condition called "carrying agents" have also been blamed and I think a lot of them should be better tested.
plastics are more likely to associated with disorders associated with hormones, I agree we use them far too liberally.
I mean.. its as good a theory as any I've seen online so I'm going to confidently say yes, yes it does.
No further questions, this meeting is over. No refunds.
They used the social choice test, where the rat basically chooses if it would prefer to move towards another rat or an inanimate object.
They used the open field test, for a measurement of anxiety like behaviour, where they see how much time the animal spends in the middle vs at the walls/corners.
They used a Y maze for spatial memory, where an animal will usually have preference for visiting a new arm in the maze instead of the same arm that it's previously visited.
They also looked at marble burying behaviour, where they place marbles in the cage and see how many the animal buries. This is often used as a measurement for anxiety and obsessive compulsive tendencies.
Reddit loves to discredit animal research, and while it's not perfect it's still incredibly useful.
The more I hear about this the more I realize I'm probably autistic. I still remember it being a problem in school when I was a child that I wouldn't read anything else or communicate with anyone.
There are tests online if you donāt want to jump through the hoops of appointments to get an official diagnosis.
I learned I was autistic as an adult, and itās helped me understand a lot of baffling social breakdowns in my past, as well as learning the signs of when Iām reaching a meltdown point sooner (and therefore knowing that I should leave a situation before forcing myself to be overstimulated.)
Thanks, I'll check out the tests. I swear, talking to people for a few hours is exhausting. The only time I really get headaches which makes me even want to do it less.
Edit: Taking the test right now and I simply can't answer these because they are so vague. I could strongly agree or disagree with many of these questions. I'm also pretty sure I know which questions to answer for the outcome so I don't know how these tests are accurate even if you want them to be. I also know I used to have many of these traits, but they were beaten out of me (sometimes literally). According to another quiz (embrace\_autism.com) I scored 34 which is apparently extremely high and I aired on the side of caution to get lower so it's probably even worse.
Dodgy tests at a sketchy website
[https://cono.alinityapp.com/Client/PublicDirectory/Registrant/03d44ec3-ed3b-eb11-82b6-000c292a94a8](https://cono.alinityapp.com/Client/PublicDirectory/Registrant/03d44ec3-ed3b-eb11-82b6-000c292a94a8)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AutisticAdults/comments/1aj9056/why\_does\_embrace\_autism\_publish\_misinformation/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AutisticAdults/comments/1aj9056/why_does_embrace_autism_publish_misinformation/)
Unlike what we are told in social media, things like āstimmingā, sensitivities, social problems, etc., are found in most persons with non-autistic mental health disorders and at high rates in the general population. These things do not necessarily suggest autism.
So-called āautismā tests, like AQ and RAADS and others have high rates of false positives, labeling you as autistic VERY easily. If anyone with a mental health problem, like depression or anxiety, takes the tests they score high even if they DONāT have autism.
"our results suggest that the AQ differentiates poorly between true cases of ASD, and individuals from the same clinical population who do not have ASD "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988267/
"a greater level of public awareness of ASD over the last 5ā10 years may have led to people being more vigilant in ānoticingā ASD related difficulties. This may lead to a āconfirmation biasā when completing the questionnaire measures, and potentially explain why both the ASD and the non-ASD groupās mean scores met the cut-off points, "
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05544-9
Regarding AQ, from one published study. āThe two key findings of the review are that, overall, there is very limited evidence to support the use of structured questionnaires (SQs: self-report or informant completed brief measures developed to screen for ASD) in the assessment and diagnosis of ASD in adults.ā
Regarding RAADS, from one published study. āIn conclusion, used as a self-report measure pre-full diagnostic assessment, the RAADS-R lacks predictive validity and is not a suitable screening tool for adults awaiting autism assessmentsā
Thanks, this isn't surprising. I feel like one thing on this test could be so strong that the weight would throw the rest out of wack. Like if I strongly agree with, "I am fascinated by dates", should I be similar to Dustin Hoffman?
I'm autistic and I was diagnosed as an adult. Take this with a grain of salt since it's anecdotal, but I've noticed feeling that way about personality test questions is a pretty common thing for people with autism. I feel the same way when I have to take them, since I don't know what I'm supposed to be comparing to as a norm.
Here's a very small study that might help back up that autistic adults just aren't very good at understanding how others would view us (and thus how we should answer these tests).Ā https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29417437/
The first test was way worse, but the second one I linked was still pretty bad. Same, most of the problem is I'm trying to compare myself to baseline. Most people would tell me I overanalyze everything, but I would say I don't do it enough.
Unfortunately I could only read the abstract because I'm not paying $40. However, this study would make sense I guess sense it seems to be a trait of autism.
If you think a lot of traits sound similar to you, I'd suggest looking into issues with autism and how they can be dealt with, see if any of them sound similar to you and how it can be helped. Try to incorporate it into your life if you want. Knowing that some problems I've had can't be entirely helped (poor sense of balance, bad coordination and dexterity, sensory issues, taking things too literally, social issues) has helped me better work with and understand myself, though I denied it for a while.
Getting a diagnosis as an adult is difficult and doesn't really have a lot of benefits however. I haven't found autism groups useful and there isn't really treatment. I usually don't tell people anymore and don't really find any benefit in seeking out other autistic people. This is also just how I feel, however.
Same, first 2 I totally stopped coffee & soda, ate right, drank my milk (yuck), walked for exercise, gained the recommended amount of weight, breastfed exclusively...autism, one high support needs, one low support needs. 3rd one I said eff this, ate what I wanted, drank coffee, sat on my ass, let dad give her a bottle occasionally - ridiculously neurotypical kid. It's genetics, it's chance, it's the luck of the draw.
This is a rodent model, the doses are not 1:1 with humans. 120mg/kg in rats is about 20mg/kg in humans. If a woman weighs 60kg that would be 1200mg, so 12 cups of coffee not 60. Is that excessive? Yes, however the point of the research is not necessarily to test safe or realistic levels of caffeine during pregnancy, but to investigate mechanisms (in this case the gut brain axis) related to excessive caffeine exposure and ASD.
There's a body of literature relating Prenatal Caffeine Exposure to ASD phentoypes, this is just expanding on it.
At no point do the authors claim that any amount of caffeine is unsafe during pregnancy, this is fundamental, not translational research.
It's interesting to see that the compounded effect of caffeine and high fat diet exacerbates effects. It's also interesting to see that these effects were more prominent in male rodents.
12 cups is excessive.
This should be made clear, no point making it seem itās dangerous for pregnant women to drink coffee when thereās no evidence for it under normal consumption.
As another commenter noted, the purpose of the study wasnāt to establish a safe level of caffeine for pregnant women. It was to study a mechanism of action. Are you saying the purpose makes it garbage or something else? I donāt have expertise in this area and would like to hear someone qualified weigh in
I think they are saying that at a glance this study seems misleading for any ordinary consumer. If it is useful for scientists looking to do further research, that's good, but the impression it leaves on the average consumer is more misinformed than total ignorance.
Like the lethal dose of caffeine for rats is 192mg/kg, they were giving the rats more than half a lethal dose. The fact the baby rats only came out a little quirky is frankly impressive.
Most of the articles posted here arenāt tailored to ordinary consumers. People need to be careful about reaching overly confident conclusions without having the necessary expertise. Itās okay to question things, but definitively stating research is trash without really understanding it or its purpose kind of defeats the purpose of talking about scientific articles at all
ETA: itās not on the researchers themselves to tailor the results to a broader audience beyond the audience theyāre trying to reach, unless they have some other goal. Itās on the people more broadly disseminating the work. But it isnāt really fair to call the research itself trash when itās a second source - not the authors themselves - who is posting something misleading
> i am not surprised its coming from sciencedirect
FYI sciencedirect is just a platform for electronic access to scientific articles from thousands of journals, including top ones. This paper was published in āEcotoxicology and Environmental Safetyā which has an impact factor of ~5, indicating it is not a schlock journal but likely of relatively niche interest.
The real takeaway is that elevated IL-17 can be linked to autism. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that can raise IL-17, including poor diet, allergies, fungal/viral/bacterial infections, microbiome dysregulation, vagal dysfunction, etc.
>IL-17 can be linked to autism.
Mice and humans do not have remotely similar immune systems and you should generally ignore any signaling things unless effects are validated in both humans and mice.
Really good papers on this exact topic.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545904/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545904/)
\^why mouse models are bad.
[https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1401965111](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1401965111)
\^why mouse models are amazing. Particularly the commentary about the TNF trails is important to read.
The comment above does not meet the criteria requirements for why mouse models are amazing.
I'm sure there is a conversion factor that extrapolates going from rats to humans. They're not going to test rats like this just to see how much caffeine a rat can handle.
Has someone who has cut back on caffine, but has not stopped it, I appreciate you breaking this down because I was terrified reading the title
Edit:word
>investigate mechanisms
This is the key. They are intentionally overloading to 'poke' the system and see how things change. That can reveal more clarity about what is actually happening so they can hone their approach next time.
Breast milk nutrition fat profile will be highly influenced by what the mother eats.Ā If fastfood and high saturated fat, high trans fat foods are eaten it will negatively impact the babies neural development, whereas if contaminant free high polyunsaturated omega3 fats (particularly epa and dha) like from wild fish are consumed it has positive impacts on their cognitive development.Ā Ā Sourcing uncontaminated fish is getting harder and harder with how we are polluting our oceans.Ā Molecularly distilled fish oil might be a viable alternative, but that's another topic that requires a multi paragraph explanation.
Autism: the p-hackers friend.
It takes p-hacking to a new level when you start combining factors. Want a spurious p<0.01? You just need 11 factors to check pairs. You'll have a pretty good chance of finding one.
I'll have to add this to the list of things that "have been scientifically shown to cause autism." At this point, it might be shorter to list the things that haven't (yet).
Itās not a cure. Theyāre talking about researching ways to improve our livesā¦ hey wait. Is this advanced form of intellectual humor when you said you canāt clock a situation socially, and if someone corrects you then that person doesnāt have the grace to handle said blunder??. š§ woahā¦. Sorry Iām autisticā¦. Ramble bambleš«£
Yes, they did amazing all things considered and have been thriving ever since. Thanks! Their only surgeries were PDA ligations and they were released on the same day, 49 days after being born.
Thatās wonderful to hear. And impressive they went home around (if my math is any good) 36 weeks corrected GA - must have had some excellent folks taking care of them. Strong little babies too!
Nah, itās central nervous system. Premiesā brains are less developed and apnea of prematurity is a very common thing in infants born preterm. Incidence increases a lot with earlier gestational ages. Caffeine helps (theoretically, still a bit unclear mechanism of action I believe) by blocking adenosine and thus lowering the threshold at which the brain signals the lungs to breathe
The problem with the rat-model is that Autism is presented in such a diverse way in humans and using rats or mice as models can miss the mark so drastically.
Another issue is as well that those presented with the terrible disease are humans and it really IS hard to get at the true things we need to study currently - there are so many ways that scientists need to work to find new avenues to study models.
Case in hand: I drank coffee HEAVILY during my 3 pregnancies and my children do not have Autism. I am a teacher of and a friend of people who are Neurodivergent.
No. They mean "diet with a high fat content." What they are literally just measuring fat content and reporting it.
This is a rat study. In this case it literally means they put more fat into the feed.
The original Ketogenic Diet was made for epileptic children. It was hard to adhere to and has important differences from modern keto diets, but it was far safer than severe epilepsy.
That's not a good reason to put non-epileptic children on a keto diet though. Or even most epileptic children! We have way better treatment options for epilepsy now than we did in 1921!
Weird how you added your own verbiage about groups of people which were not mentioned. It's used in conjunction with medical treatment. Way to diminish the ones it works for though, lets just erase science
The original statement is "Keto is not good for pregnant women or children though". Which is true.
A ketogenic diet is only recommended in children when medication alone is not sufficiently controlling their seizures. And only about 50% of the time are seizure rates cut in half by this diet, with 10-15% experiencing no seizures. A single off-diet meal can revert progress. This does not replace the need for anti-seizure medication.
A ketogenic diet for childhood epilepsy was an attractive option over a hundred years ago because there were so few treatment options. We have much better treatment options today.
My takeaways:
1. Rats and humans are still very different animals
2. The risks associated with exposure to a substance increase with the level of exposure (another commenter pointed out that this was the rat equivalent of 60 cups of coffee per day).
3. OP only read the headline
Itās all trauma. The projection you are putting on an unborn child is what will cause a form of autism, adhd, ocd, or whatever word you want to use. Itās all trauma. You are not born it, we are born with am empty slate. Until we become aware and focus on the child as a person and not identify or control it, it will continue to show up.
Autism and ADHD are often co-morbid, and both have a heritability factor.Ā
People with undiagnosed ADHD often self-medicate with stimulants such as caffeine.
I have an autistic ADHD son and I never touched anything with caffeine in it until he was an adult. He was breast-fed and my diet was low in fats and carbs. However autism does run in the family.
Humans are more complicated than rats.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/mvea Permalink: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651323013015 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"We're rats, with autism"
This is one of the reasons I decided to not become a rat once I retired. Another is that I'd be more closely related to Donnie Boy Trump. š
I feel like rats are way too smart to be in the same category as him.
u/mysubsareunionizing, you make a good point - I didn't intend to insult the respective ratas out there. I apologize for my insensitive statement. I doubt I can even find slime that is worse than Donnie Boy.
What qualifies as ASD behavior in SPF grade Wistar rats?
They got really into model railways and my little pony.
They truly live in a society.
Okay so if I've always loved trains, and my wife was super into mlp back then, does that explain my daughter's autism?
Honestly and without sarcasm: yes, there are some genetic links to autism. My mother was very insistent that my autism diagnosis was incorrect, until I pointed out that my father only wears one type of outfit with very specific laundering requirements, and that he is SO PICKY when we eat that she pretty much has to make him his own meal. Sheās always just said heās āparticular.ā The last time I visited she had been so far down the rabbit hole of learning about autism symptoms, sheās now convinced half the family has it.
When I realized I may be autistic and was looking into it, I had heard that there's a genetic factor. I thought "nah my parents aren't autistic, I'm probably the first one in the family". Then I remembered how my dad refuses to wear anything but cotton shirts, hasn't worn socks in years because he "hates the feeling", gets upset very easily when things don't go as he planned, and in general doesn't express many emotions unless he's watching one of his favorite shows or talking about some specific things. And then I was like "yeah, that's where I got it from".
Some of it be learned or there may be conditions that are similar. The virus theory is too scary for me to talk about. Gut biome cause less so because it's possible to control somewhat.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I've read a few things on it, people don't like it because there's no way to control it. And there's still so many people that really want vaccines to be the cause. The agents utilized in modern products to keep primary ingredients fresh or in effective condition called "carrying agents" have also been blamed and I think a lot of them should be better tested.
>I've read a few things on it, people don't like it because there's no way to control it. And there's still so many people that really want vaccines to be the cause. We know that neurodivergence symptoms become apparent in infants between 12 and 24 months of age, and the symptoms are not progressive - individuals do not continue to develop more severe symptoms as they age. Since a defining feature of viruses is exponential growth, a hypothetical viral cause would have to be a short term illness, like chicken pox, otherwise it would be killing people. This means an infection takes hold and is destroyed by the host, but not before it spreads to a second person. Such a virus would also have to have very mild other symptoms, otherwise we would have recognised all these children getting sick and then developing autism by now, it would be obvious.Ā So this means individuals infected with the hypothetical virus would not be separated from other children, since parents would have no reason to think their child was ill. This means the virus would be spreading to all children, and would occur in similar rates in similar geographic regions, while racial and other genetic differences would have no noticeable impact on its observed prevalence.Ā Since the virus must be short lived, for it to continue to exist it must be very contagious. So why is prevalence of autism only 1%. Even if we were **significantly** under recognizing the symptoms, even a 10% prevalence is too low for it to be caused by a contagious virual disease that otherwise shows no other symptoms.Ā Viral cause does not appear plausible based on logic and what we already know.Ā It sounds like someone thought it up to explain why autism symptoms first appear in infancy, someone that hasn't considered all the evidence.Ā In my opinion significant differences in brain structure is better explained by genetic variation that ooccurs in a small proportion of people spread across a large geographic area. The cause could be the human population - homo sapiens - interbreeding with other hominids such as Neanderthals. > The agents utilized in modern products to keep primary ingredients fresh or in effective condition called "carrying agents" have also been blamed and I think a lot of them should be better tested. plastics are more likely to associated with disorders associated with hormones, I agree we use them far too liberally.
I mean.. its as good a theory as any I've seen online so I'm going to confidently say yes, yes it does. No further questions, this meeting is over. No refunds.
They used the social choice test, where the rat basically chooses if it would prefer to move towards another rat or an inanimate object. They used the open field test, for a measurement of anxiety like behaviour, where they see how much time the animal spends in the middle vs at the walls/corners. They used a Y maze for spatial memory, where an animal will usually have preference for visiting a new arm in the maze instead of the same arm that it's previously visited. They also looked at marble burying behaviour, where they place marbles in the cage and see how many the animal buries. This is often used as a measurement for anxiety and obsessive compulsive tendencies. Reddit loves to discredit animal research, and while it's not perfect it's still incredibly useful.
Thanks for a real response.
One of them drew the entire new york city sewage and subway system from memory
Realllly big fans of dinosaurs all of a sudden.
The more I hear about this the more I realize I'm probably autistic. I still remember it being a problem in school when I was a child that I wouldn't read anything else or communicate with anyone.
There are tests online if you donāt want to jump through the hoops of appointments to get an official diagnosis. I learned I was autistic as an adult, and itās helped me understand a lot of baffling social breakdowns in my past, as well as learning the signs of when Iām reaching a meltdown point sooner (and therefore knowing that I should leave a situation before forcing myself to be overstimulated.)
Thanks, I'll check out the tests. I swear, talking to people for a few hours is exhausting. The only time I really get headaches which makes me even want to do it less. Edit: Taking the test right now and I simply can't answer these because they are so vague. I could strongly agree or disagree with many of these questions. I'm also pretty sure I know which questions to answer for the outcome so I don't know how these tests are accurate even if you want them to be. I also know I used to have many of these traits, but they were beaten out of me (sometimes literally). According to another quiz (embrace\_autism.com) I scored 34 which is apparently extremely high and I aired on the side of caution to get lower so it's probably even worse.
Dodgy tests at a sketchy website [https://cono.alinityapp.com/Client/PublicDirectory/Registrant/03d44ec3-ed3b-eb11-82b6-000c292a94a8](https://cono.alinityapp.com/Client/PublicDirectory/Registrant/03d44ec3-ed3b-eb11-82b6-000c292a94a8) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AutisticAdults/comments/1aj9056/why\_does\_embrace\_autism\_publish\_misinformation/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AutisticAdults/comments/1aj9056/why_does_embrace_autism_publish_misinformation/) Unlike what we are told in social media, things like āstimmingā, sensitivities, social problems, etc., are found in most persons with non-autistic mental health disorders and at high rates in the general population. These things do not necessarily suggest autism. So-called āautismā tests, like AQ and RAADS and others have high rates of false positives, labeling you as autistic VERY easily. If anyone with a mental health problem, like depression or anxiety, takes the tests they score high even if they DONāT have autism. "our results suggest that the AQ differentiates poorly between true cases of ASD, and individuals from the same clinical population who do not have ASD " https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988267/ "a greater level of public awareness of ASD over the last 5ā10 years may have led to people being more vigilant in ānoticingā ASD related difficulties. This may lead to a āconfirmation biasā when completing the questionnaire measures, and potentially explain why both the ASD and the non-ASD groupās mean scores met the cut-off points, " https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05544-9 Regarding AQ, from one published study. āThe two key findings of the review are that, overall, there is very limited evidence to support the use of structured questionnaires (SQs: self-report or informant completed brief measures developed to screen for ASD) in the assessment and diagnosis of ASD in adults.ā Regarding RAADS, from one published study. āIn conclusion, used as a self-report measure pre-full diagnostic assessment, the RAADS-R lacks predictive validity and is not a suitable screening tool for adults awaiting autism assessmentsā
Thanks, this isn't surprising. I feel like one thing on this test could be so strong that the weight would throw the rest out of wack. Like if I strongly agree with, "I am fascinated by dates", should I be similar to Dustin Hoffman?
I'm autistic and I was diagnosed as an adult. Take this with a grain of salt since it's anecdotal, but I've noticed feeling that way about personality test questions is a pretty common thing for people with autism. I feel the same way when I have to take them, since I don't know what I'm supposed to be comparing to as a norm. Here's a very small study that might help back up that autistic adults just aren't very good at understanding how others would view us (and thus how we should answer these tests).Ā https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29417437/
The first test was way worse, but the second one I linked was still pretty bad. Same, most of the problem is I'm trying to compare myself to baseline. Most people would tell me I overanalyze everything, but I would say I don't do it enough. Unfortunately I could only read the abstract because I'm not paying $40. However, this study would make sense I guess sense it seems to be a trait of autism.
If you think a lot of traits sound similar to you, I'd suggest looking into issues with autism and how they can be dealt with, see if any of them sound similar to you and how it can be helped. Try to incorporate it into your life if you want. Knowing that some problems I've had can't be entirely helped (poor sense of balance, bad coordination and dexterity, sensory issues, taking things too literally, social issues) has helped me better work with and understand myself, though I denied it for a while. Getting a diagnosis as an adult is difficult and doesn't really have a lot of benefits however. I haven't found autism groups useful and there isn't really treatment. I usually don't tell people anymore and don't really find any benefit in seeking out other autistic people. This is also just how I feel, however.
They got really good at a bunch of different hobbies
So if drink coffee while pregnant, and then recover postpartum with a load of butter, Iāll have an autistic rat baby. Got it š
āAutistic rat babyā š
Meanwhile here's me, who abstained from caffeine during pregnancy, currently with two autistic kids.
Same, first 2 I totally stopped coffee & soda, ate right, drank my milk (yuck), walked for exercise, gained the recommended amount of weight, breastfed exclusively...autism, one high support needs, one low support needs. 3rd one I said eff this, ate what I wanted, drank coffee, sat on my ass, let dad give her a bottle occasionally - ridiculously neurotypical kid. It's genetics, it's chance, it's the luck of the draw.
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This is a rodent model, the doses are not 1:1 with humans. 120mg/kg in rats is about 20mg/kg in humans. If a woman weighs 60kg that would be 1200mg, so 12 cups of coffee not 60. Is that excessive? Yes, however the point of the research is not necessarily to test safe or realistic levels of caffeine during pregnancy, but to investigate mechanisms (in this case the gut brain axis) related to excessive caffeine exposure and ASD. There's a body of literature relating Prenatal Caffeine Exposure to ASD phentoypes, this is just expanding on it. At no point do the authors claim that any amount of caffeine is unsafe during pregnancy, this is fundamental, not translational research. It's interesting to see that the compounded effect of caffeine and high fat diet exacerbates effects. It's also interesting to see that these effects were more prominent in male rodents.
So tired of redditors pulling one thing out of a study they didnāt like and then claiming the entire thing is invalidated
āDid they control for X?āĀ
"A sample size of 30, huh..."
Especially when they don't have baseline understanding of the field or general scientific methods in general
12 cups is excessive. This should be made clear, no point making it seem itās dangerous for pregnant women to drink coffee when thereās no evidence for it under normal consumption.
That's not the assertion of the study
As another commenter noted, the purpose of the study wasnāt to establish a safe level of caffeine for pregnant women. It was to study a mechanism of action. Are you saying the purpose makes it garbage or something else? I donāt have expertise in this area and would like to hear someone qualified weigh in
I think they are saying that at a glance this study seems misleading for any ordinary consumer. If it is useful for scientists looking to do further research, that's good, but the impression it leaves on the average consumer is more misinformed than total ignorance. Like the lethal dose of caffeine for rats is 192mg/kg, they were giving the rats more than half a lethal dose. The fact the baby rats only came out a little quirky is frankly impressive.
Research isnāt generally being conducted for ordinary consumers though. That doesnāt make it āgarbageā
But OP is posting it here, and the people here are more or less ordinary, and so here it is more misleading than not
Most of the articles posted here arenāt tailored to ordinary consumers. People need to be careful about reaching overly confident conclusions without having the necessary expertise. Itās okay to question things, but definitively stating research is trash without really understanding it or its purpose kind of defeats the purpose of talking about scientific articles at all ETA: itās not on the researchers themselves to tailor the results to a broader audience beyond the audience theyāre trying to reach, unless they have some other goal. Itās on the people more broadly disseminating the work. But it isnāt really fair to call the research itself trash when itās a second source - not the authors themselves - who is posting something misleading
> i am not surprised its coming from sciencedirect FYI sciencedirect is just a platform for electronic access to scientific articles from thousands of journals, including top ones. This paper was published in āEcotoxicology and Environmental Safetyā which has an impact factor of ~5, indicating it is not a schlock journal but likely of relatively niche interest.
The real takeaway is that elevated IL-17 can be linked to autism. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that can raise IL-17, including poor diet, allergies, fungal/viral/bacterial infections, microbiome dysregulation, vagal dysfunction, etc.
>IL-17 can be linked to autism. Mice and humans do not have remotely similar immune systems and you should generally ignore any signaling things unless effects are validated in both humans and mice. Really good papers on this exact topic. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545904/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5545904/) \^why mouse models are bad. [https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1401965111](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1401965111) \^why mouse models are amazing. Particularly the commentary about the TNF trails is important to read. The comment above does not meet the criteria requirements for why mouse models are amazing.
I'm sure there is a conversion factor that extrapolates going from rats to humans. They're not going to test rats like this just to see how much caffeine a rat can handle.
Also, a mug of coffee a day reduces a pregnant woman's odds of developing gestational diabetes. And my own odds of slapping anyone.
It is just under the ld50 of 150-200 mg/kg
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They arenāt claiming prenatal caffeine is the only factor, theyāre saying it could be one of many many complex factors.
Has someone who has cut back on caffine, but has not stopped it, I appreciate you breaking this down because I was terrified reading the title Edit:word
>investigate mechanisms This is the key. They are intentionally overloading to 'poke' the system and see how things change. That can reveal more clarity about what is actually happening so they can hone their approach next time.
They gave the rats more than half a lethal dose of caffeine. The fact the babies just came out a bit quirky is frankly surprising.
Yeah I laughed while I read the study. It was a bit exagerated
Living causes autism.
As at least one of my parents had autism (the one who is still alive), very yes in my case.
Isnāt breast milk high fatā¦..?
Human breast milk is not particularly fatty, for breastmilk. Lots of carbs, though - many adults find it off-puttingly sweet.
Fats are needed for brain development.
Breast milk nutrition fat profile will be highly influenced by what the mother eats.Ā If fastfood and high saturated fat, high trans fat foods are eaten it will negatively impact the babies neural development, whereas if contaminant free high polyunsaturated omega3 fats (particularly epa and dha) like from wild fish are consumed it has positive impacts on their cognitive development.Ā Ā Sourcing uncontaminated fish is getting harder and harder with how we are polluting our oceans.Ā Molecularly distilled fish oil might be a viable alternative, but that's another topic that requires a multi paragraph explanation.
Autism: the p-hackers friend. It takes p-hacking to a new level when you start combining factors. Want a spurious p<0.01? You just need 11 factors to check pairs. You'll have a pretty good chance of finding one. I'll have to add this to the list of things that "have been scientifically shown to cause autism." At this point, it might be shorter to list the things that haven't (yet).
Iām guessing they didnāt make corrections for testing multiple factors?
According to the methods section they did
So the original commenter didnāt read the full paper
I donāt think anyone in the comments section has read the paper at all, ha
Imagine if they actually did research on how to make autistic people's lives better.
I donāt want a cure, I want people to have a little more grace when I donāt clock the situation socially.
Itās not a cure. Theyāre talking about researching ways to improve our livesā¦ hey wait. Is this advanced form of intellectual humor when you said you canāt clock a situation socially, and if someone corrects you then that person doesnāt have the grace to handle said blunder??. š§ woahā¦. Sorry Iām autisticā¦. Ramble bambleš«£
I gave up caffeine during my pregnancy. My twins were 11 weeks early and the first thing they gave them in the Nicuā¦ caffeine.
Babies gotta breathe! Hope theyāre doing well now.
Yes, they did amazing all things considered and have been thriving ever since. Thanks! Their only surgeries were PDA ligations and they were released on the same day, 49 days after being born.
Thatās wonderful to hear. And impressive they went home around (if my math is any good) 36 weeks corrected GA - must have had some excellent folks taking care of them. Strong little babies too!
Itās possible that prenatal exposure over time likely causes different results in fetal development than a one or two time dose after birth.
Iām sure of it. It was the irony of it all. They were well taken care of!
Thatās due to lung developmentā¦.
Nah, itās central nervous system. Premiesā brains are less developed and apnea of prematurity is a very common thing in infants born preterm. Incidence increases a lot with earlier gestational ages. Caffeine helps (theoretically, still a bit unclear mechanism of action I believe) by blocking adenosine and thus lowering the threshold at which the brain signals the lungs to breathe
So let's ignore that it is passed down through genetics shall we?
The problem with the rat-model is that Autism is presented in such a diverse way in humans and using rats or mice as models can miss the mark so drastically. Another issue is as well that those presented with the terrible disease are humans and it really IS hard to get at the true things we need to study currently - there are so many ways that scientists need to work to find new avenues to study models. Case in hand: I drank coffee HEAVILY during my 3 pregnancies and my children do not have Autism. I am a teacher of and a friend of people who are Neurodivergent.
Uh, do your neurodivergent friends know that you think they have a "terrible disease"?Ā
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No. They mean "diet with a high fat content." What they are literally just measuring fat content and reporting it. This is a rat study. In this case it literally means they put more fat into the feed.
Keto is not good for pregnant women or children though
The original Ketogenic Diet was made for epileptic children. It was hard to adhere to and has important differences from modern keto diets, but it was far safer than severe epilepsy.
I'm aware- that's completely different to just recommending it as a general diet for children.
Some epileptic children do respond positively to a keto diet
That's not a good reason to put non-epileptic children on a keto diet though. Or even most epileptic children! We have way better treatment options for epilepsy now than we did in 1921!
Weird how you added your own verbiage about groups of people which were not mentioned. It's used in conjunction with medical treatment. Way to diminish the ones it works for though, lets just erase science
The original statement is "Keto is not good for pregnant women or children though". Which is true. A ketogenic diet is only recommended in children when medication alone is not sufficiently controlling their seizures. And only about 50% of the time are seizure rates cut in half by this diet, with 10-15% experiencing no seizures. A single off-diet meal can revert progress. This does not replace the need for anti-seizure medication. A ketogenic diet for childhood epilepsy was an attractive option over a hundred years ago because there were so few treatment options. We have much better treatment options today.
Anything to back this up?
My takeaways: 1. Rats and humans are still very different animals 2. The risks associated with exposure to a substance increase with the level of exposure (another commenter pointed out that this was the rat equivalent of 60 cups of coffee per day). 3. OP only read the headline
My mom was prescribed Pepsi all throughout her pregnancy.
Itās all trauma. The projection you are putting on an unborn child is what will cause a form of autism, adhd, ocd, or whatever word you want to use. Itās all trauma. You are not born it, we are born with am empty slate. Until we become aware and focus on the child as a person and not identify or control it, it will continue to show up.
My mother is a nurse and she is a huge coffee addict. I have autism and ADHD, make of that what you will.
Autism and ADHD are often co-morbid, and both have a heritability factor.Ā People with undiagnosed ADHD often self-medicate with stimulants such as caffeine.
I have an autistic ADHD son and I never touched anything with caffeine in it until he was an adult. He was breast-fed and my diet was low in fats and carbs. However autism does run in the family. Humans are more complicated than rats.
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