New Autism Treatment Tested

Main Category: Autism
Article Date: 31 Oct 2007 - 4:00 PDT

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Today, like every day, 75 more children will be born with autism.* It is the fastest growing developmental disorder in this country.** While there is no cure, there is hope for a new, more effective treatment. Doctors are turning to a drug that's been used for generations to treat other diseases to see if it will help with a new generation of autism patients.

Even though he's only 5 years old, Jack Otte is reading at a 5th grade level. His mom, Alicia, says he taught himself to read. And while she's astounded by those flashes of brilliance, she's also frustrated. Jack has autism and at times, it won't let him interact in his class at school.

"You get that initial diagnosis and you're completely devastated. And that devastation somewhat turns into desperation because then you're immediately trying to find treatments and asking what's the best treatment," says Alicia.

It turns out the next new treatment might be something that's been around for generations. It's a drug called mecamylamine, and it was the first pill used to treat high blodd pressure in the 1950's.*** By the time Alicia was a child, it was nearly obsolete. Now, it just might help her son, and a million more children with autism.

"If it works, it would be a really important breakthrough," says Eugene Arnold, MD, with Ohio State University Medical Center. Dr. Arnold and his team of researchers will test the drug on children with autism. He says it's not what the drug did in the 50's to help with high blood pressure that's giving them hope, but what it's done recently. Mecamylamine has been effective in helping children control the symptoms of conditions like Tourette Syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder. He hopes it may do the same in autism.

"There is some hope that it will make a significant improvement in the core symptoms: the social impairment, the communication, the repetitive behavior, such that it will help them to faster get along the road to rehabilitation," says Dr. Arnold.

Autism affects four times more boys than girls and the number of cases has increased ten-fold in the past decade alone.****

For more information, go to Ohio State University Medical Center's website http://medicalcenter.osu.edu and click on "news & media room."

* Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov

** Facts and Statistics, Autism Society of America, http://www.autism-society.org

*** Mecamylamine, National Institutes of Health, http//grande.nal.usda.gov/ibids

**** "Autism Speaks Approves More Than $15 Million in New Research Grants", Autism Speaks, http://www.autismspeaks.org

For further information please go to:
Ohio State University Medical Center