Aspies For Freedom

I don't know if this is meant as a joke or not.But this,for me,is one of the two hallmarks of autism.The other being genetic history.I guess I need to start digging up more articles from the medical and scientific journals from the past nine years, linking autism and autoimmune disease.I got dozens,most are very scientific,and technical.Though not as many as I do connecting it to schizophrenia/bipolar disease.I am trying to contact the people writing the APA,who are working on the DSM-V to have genetic history a primary diagnostic criteria,and autoimmune di

You know,I've been thinking of boards like this in the past few days,and what a disappointment they are.

This is the only autism board where I have posted,and there is any response to my posts,or any real activity level.I am continuing to enter new territory all of the time,and I have nowhere I can turn for help.For the past week and a half,I have had a severe flareup of inflammatory bowel disease.These generally last about two weeks before they settle down.I still have active rheumatic heart  disease,but no fever.So for a week,I have had two active autoimmune conditions,but no fever. Yesterday,I began to experience some serious regression.I started to do stuff I hadn't done in years.The spinning.The hand movements,and flapping.The rocking on my butt.Clearly,I can handle one active autoimmune disease at a time,but not two.It obviously creates a neuroimmune overload.

A simple Google scholar search,will bring up a bunch of articles,that describe this phenomena,but if you do a regular search,you only get garbage about vaccines.What I want to know,is there anything that can be done about it ? Sounds like a lot of fun for an adult to go through ,doesn't it ?Not to mention something to CELBRATE!!

But I can't find anything specifically.It would be nice to find somebody who had gone through similar stuff,which is one reason you join boards like this in the first place.So,I guess everybody else who has problems like this,is a noncommunicative LFA ?

Lovely.

If it were true, autoimmune causing AutSpec, it would be abnormal- Aside from the normal cellular safeguards to autoimmune reactions, neural tissues have additional guards against immune system activity. A direct cell-to-cell interaction can be ruled out then. So then, what type of autoimmune disease do you suspect? There are only 4 very specific chemical pathways to autoimmunity, most of which bring on increasing inflammation or death.

The mechanisms and type list is fairly recent, I expect you won't find the revisions easily on google (I could not). Want I should get my book? I think it is still in my car. What is your main study, exactly?

What are your favorite sources? Referring to Google scholar searches, I'd like to see.

With the way health insurance works in the US I am not so sure it is a great thing to prove. It can be considered as pre-existing condition. (please don't derail the topic, I'm just mentioning it)

Since heritability is implicit for both, correlation is interesting with or without causation. Consider that the reams of research into myriad autoimmune conditions may be relevant to current studies of autism. And vice-versa.

dove, it was your original posts that prompted this poll. It is, in fact, not something I've much about.

ED, As for bending science to suit the requirements of the U.S. healthcare system -- bah!! Pure science without political or economic considerations, please! I know, that's an endangered MO, but it is really the the only way to go if knowledge is, indeed, what we seek.

Right. And if they discover AutSpec is a symptom of autoimmune disease? Then there is no neurodiversity, you have instead immunodiversity.

Correlation is causation, one way or another.

We can't discuss much of the science here. There just isn't an audience for it. So then what is left to talk about? The social issues. Like it or not science is a slave to the system.

I just looked up a disease my mum has always cautioned me about, known to be hereditary in women. It is definitely autoimmune, I was not aware of that. One of its symptoms is lighter menstrual flow and I just don't think I'll ever get that

What I do find odd is that women are 3x more likely to have an autoimmune disease than men, and that the majority of the diseases occur in childbearing years. Also, the transmission is more than hereditary. A mother's current immunity and autoimmunity is given directly to her offspring through the placenta (although this is not permanent: see alloimmunity).

Consider that the majority of AutSpec is male. Male peptides in the womb would be more likely to be attacked by the mother's immune system via alloimmunity if you consider the mother's positive/negative selection to be incomplete with respect to the male chromosome. The infant immune system can either completely degrade its auto-alloimmunity, or instead before it degrades use it to generate a permanent set of autoimmune antibodies. That could be a key point between two types of AutSpec.

But I think that reaction would have been noticed by now (I think it tends to be fatal). Still, if you wanted to test that theory you'd need to make a new poll comparing maternal autoimmunity.

Tigger are you asking me to keep discussing the science, or to explain why I think there are so few science'y people here? As a scientist I don't see a lot of other scientists on this forum. That or they are not using any of the jargon they need to be using (as professionals it is our duty to confuse the layman ).

Yea but IgA's stay in the gut, whereas IgG's can act in the serum, and that is maybe where the reaction could happen. Perhaps some development peptide used by the brain is being pulled out?

I agree that there is a sex bias on diagnosis of males, but I don't see that being corrected with DSM adjustments. Some sort of assay will be the only real way to tell. I'm not confident about the current DSM as I've heard of 2 boys so far labeled with AS when they had a brother labeled Aut and had severe language impairment. One of the two I know was mislabeled for the boy's benefit.

Other way around? I was thinking the IgG would act in serum. I'm pretty sure cell-surface activation would cause death via compliment. Development signaling peptides could be targeted. Also a membrane protein on the blood brain barrier could get attacked (perhaps by T-cells?).

I can't find the list of autoimmune types on the interweb. But well we have B-Cell mediated and T-Cell mediated. I don't see how T-Cell mediated would be much possible. The only working B-Cell idea is antibody attacking something in the serum. Got any ideas? I'm skeptical at best, but still curious.

Lucie1- that might be because hypothyroidism is much more common than the other, more harmful, autoimmune disorders. The hypothyroid rates are probably because of proximity to the immune system.

You could look at this statistically- take the number of yes'es and divide by the number of no's + everyone that didn't vote that did read the thread (people are normally inclined to vote yes or to just abstain). Compare that to the incidence rate of autoimmune disorders. Well, that would be a more proper way to do it. Unfortunately the "number of views" counter counts the same person multiple times.

If autism in inclined to race as we know autoimmune diseases are to european decent, then that could be the correlation (if any). Non causative at that.. Hmm.

I believe it was Einstein who asserted that anything you can't say so that your grandma can understand is something you don't really understand yourself.

p.s. correlation is NOT causation ... or perhaps the declining number of pirates really IS the cause of global warming ....

Double whammy for this poll as a data source -- both tainted sampling frame and reliance on self-reported data.

True true

I dunnnnnno about that. My grandma is the root of my family's intelligence history. She would definitely stop the conversation to ask for explanation or rewording- or even a diagram.

My mom has Lupus and hyperthyroid and RA
I have JRA, Autoimmune Autonomic Neuropathy and possibly Lupus.

And so it goes...every female except my older sister has an autoimmune disease...the men escaped it...

Oddly...forgot to say...my mom got Lupus shortly after I was born...she was diagnosed when I was 2.

Yeah...my autism affects my ability to express my symptoms (verbally and non verbally) and if I write them down I get called a hypochondriac...but how else am I supposed to communicate as I don't give off pain or distress signals????

So when I'm in a full blown autoimmune flare that's gone on for a MONTH it's time for it to come to an end...but my doc's ego is blinding her and I'm stuck in a limbo where no one wants to deal with me.  It sucks.