Member Comments are provided by individuals and reflect their personal opinions only. Under NO circumstances should you act on any advice or opinion posted in this forum. ALWAYS check with your personal physician before taking any action regarding your health! MedHelp International and our partners, sponsors and affiliates have no obligation to monitor any comments posted on this site, or the content and/or accuracy of such exchanges. MedHelp International does not endorse the views of any user.
Neurology (Expert Forum)
Secretin
This forum is for questions and support regarding neurology issues such as: Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, Autism, Brain Cancer, Cerebral Palsy, Chronic Pain, Epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, Headaches, MS, Neuralgia, Neuropathy, Parkinson's Disease, RSD, Sleep Disorders, Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury.
Doctor's Answer
by CCF Neuro[P] MD, RPS, Sep 14, 2000 12:00AM
Dear Patrick:
The initial observation was for two children who had the diagnosis of autism and confounding problem with GI digestion. They received treatment with secrtin from their GI problem and the parents noticed an improvement with autistic behavior. (I hope I am remembering correctly) This caused excitement in the PDD community and a clinical trial was started. Unfortunately, this has not panned out as hoped, and most of us do not thing there is a correlation between secretin and improvement with autistic behavior (the trial at CCF was cancelled). There are several lines of evidence suggesting that there is a congenital abnormality in brain development (there was a nice review article in Scientific American about this line of thinking, last year)in some children. Some other interesting findings are that there seems to be a disorder of energy metabolism in another group of children (abnormal urine organic acids). However, the latter two interesting findings do not help us treat the disease. A small percentage of patients we have seen have a mitochondrial disease (at least by our criteria) and have gotten somewhat better with vitamin therapy (by no way a cure).
However, for the majority of children with PDD, we do not know the answer for what caused their disorder. We do know that early intervention with speech therapy, PT, and OT help these children. Early preschool intervention at specific centers help with social integration and relatationship problems.
I hope I answered what you wanted to know about PDD.
Sincerely,
CCF Neuro MD
The initial observation was for two children who had the diagnosis of autism and confounding problem with GI digestion. They received treatment with secrtin from their GI problem and the parents noticed an improvement with autistic behavior. (I hope I am remembering correctly) This caused excitement in the PDD community and a clinical trial was started. Unfortunately, this has not panned out as hoped, and most of us do not thing there is a correlation between secretin and improvement with autistic behavior (the trial at CCF was cancelled). There are several lines of evidence suggesting that there is a congenital abnormality in brain development (there was a nice review article in Scientific American about this line of thinking, last year)in some children. Some other interesting findings are that there seems to be a disorder of energy metabolism in another group of children (abnormal urine organic acids). However, the latter two interesting findings do not help us treat the disease. A small percentage of patients we have seen have a mitochondrial disease (at least by our criteria) and have gotten somewhat better with vitamin therapy (by no way a cure).
However, for the majority of children with PDD, we do not know the answer for what caused their disorder. We do know that early intervention with speech therapy, PT, and OT help these children. Early preschool intervention at specific centers help with social integration and relatationship problems.
I hope I answered what you wanted to know about PDD.
Sincerely,
CCF Neuro MD
