Editor's note: You've really got to check out and connect
people to this interview Andy Wakefield did with Arthur Krigsman, one of the
authors of the new journal article that confirmed unusual bowel disease in
children with autism. That, you no doubt recall, is what the whole
"discredited" Lancet paper was about lo these 15 years, and millions
of autism cases, ago. Sadly, the denial of this reality plays out every day,
including at Loyola hospital in Chicago where a 14-year-old boy is currently
being treated as a psychiatric patient while his mother's pleas to investigate
his GI symptoms have so far gone unheeded. -- Dan Olmsted
Thank you to Bob Moffit for the transcription.
DR. WAKEFIELD: Hi, I'm sitting here with my friend and
colleague, Dr. Arthur Krigsman, who brings us some very exciting news from
pediatric gastroenterology. Arthur, welcome to the show.
DR. KRIGSMAN; Thank you Andy.
DR.W: You've published previously in the area of
inflammatory bowel disease in children with autism. In a nutshell, what
were the findings of that paper?
DR. K: Well, in the initial paper published in early
2010
("Clinical Presentation and Histologic Findings and
lleocolonoscopy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Chronic
Gastrointestinal Symptoms")
What we were able to show, was that, children with Autism who
had long standing gastrointestinal symptoms, like diarrhea, constipation or
abdominal pain, growth failure .. when those children underwent colonoscopy .. the biopsies showed inflammation. So that,
these children were not just having a bad day, they weren't children with
nervous stomachs, rather, they had a real organic disease that related to the
symptoms parents were complaining about.
DR W: Now that was wonderful news in
a way, because, what it lead to was the potential for new treatments.
If you found nothing, there was nothing to treat. If you found
something, then there was something you could do to help
these children.
DR
K: That's a critical point, because, the point of demonstrating there
was inflammation on the biopsies was so that you could then justify treating
them. If you find inflammation, then you have symptoms present. Then
it makes sense to try giving the patient an anti-inflammatory drug .. and ..
seeing if it helps their symptoms. And that has been our experience.
DR W: Clearly, that approach has worked
for many, many children. So that's great news. But now, really
exciting news. You've taken it to a whole new level using the most
sophisticated technology available to do what?
DR. K: We subjected the biopsies, the
inflamed intestinal biopsies of autistic children, we've subjected them to
high-tech analysis, using the technique of "microarray analysis", which studies
the molecular components that are produced by inflammatory cells. We are
now looking for the products, the molecular products of those cells .. and ..
the molecular products of those cells have distinct
signatures.
DR W: So, the genes that are switched on
or switched off effectively
DR K: Correct, correct. Not so much that
it's a genetic disease.
DR W: That's a very important point to
make, isn't it? A lot of money has gone into pure genetic research.
That is not what this is.
DR K: Right,
right.
DR W: This is saying ..these are those
that are part of the disease, these are the ones that are switched on .. these
are the ones that may be helping to drive the disease process .. and .. these
are the ones turned off .. maybe protective for example.
DR K: Yes, yes. The paper should
not be interpreted as meaning that autism is genetic.
DR W: So, tell me a little bit about the
groups that you looked at?
DR K: We had our study group .. the
children with autism, chronic gastrointestinal symptoms, who underwent
clinically indicated illeo-colonoscopy were found by the pathologist to
have non-specific inflammatory prescence in their illeum or colon. We
compared this group to non-autistic children who underwent colonoscopy and
ultimately were not found to have any diagnosis. The second control
group was non-autistic who had Crohn's disease confirmed on their
biopsy. The third control group was non-autistic children who were
found to have ulcerative colitis.
DR W: So, in other words, is there an
inflammatory bowel disease in these children? Number one. And,
number two .. is it different from the signatures in known inflammatory bowel
disease, such as, Crohn's and colitis? Is that
fair?
DR K: Yes, yes.
DR W: A novel
disease?
DR K: A novel disease. Either
a novel disease .. or .. an emerging disease .. perhaps ...
DR. W: So, an early stage, for example,
say crohn's disease?
DR K: Yes, exactly.
DR W: What did you
find?
DR K: Using microarray technology ..
what we found was .. the molecular products of the inflammatory cells in
the autistic kids was not normal. The normal patients .. when you took
those bowel biopsies and you took a look at the variety of different molecules
that were produced by those cells on the biopsies, they cluster in one
area. When you took the biopsies of autistic children with G.I. symptoms
and inflammation on biopsies .. they clustered in a second area .. and .. when
you took the bowel biopsies of non-autistic crohn's and colitis patients .. they
tended to cluster in a third area .. over-lapping each other. What was
very interesting was that .. although the autistic children biopsies clustered
in their own region, there was significant overlap with the crohn's and
ulcerative colitis. But, virtually no overlap at all with the normal
non-inflamed, non autistic children.
DR W: Now tell me, did you look at
different areas of the bowel or were you looking at just one
area?
DR K: We were looking at both illeum,
terminal illeum and the colon.
DR W: And you found similar
findings?
DR K: Yes, we found the colon biopsies
that were inflamed were just as dissimilar to normal tissue as the inflamed
illeum biopsies were to normal illeo tissue.
DR W VOICEOVER:
"So .. what this is telling us is there is a
large number of genes that are behaving differently, that are switched on or
switched off in children with autism .. when compared to other control
groups"
DR W: Fascinating findings. I mean
here we are some fifteen years on from the original work and confirmed beyond
doubt there is an inflammatory disease that may have unique characteristics in
these children with autism.
DR K: The pediatric team at Wake Forest
was exceptionally helpful .. that's what really enabled us to provide data that
is very, very meaningful.
DR W: They must feel immensely
reassured. That the open-minded gastro-enterologists who went into
this, provided the samples you needed to test our hypothesis .. and
.. now a very important publication coming out.
DR K: Correct .. and .. .the parents of
course, the parents of these children who've always been saying this for so
long. They feel very gratified and .. again .. their observations are being
validated.
DR W: They's been saying this for years
.. and .. they were absolutely right.
DR K: The issue of bowel disease,
inflammatory bowel disease, got to caught up with political issues, public
health issues and controversies, financial issues .. that it poisoned the
whole concept. The idea there might be an inflammatory bowel disease
that's unique to these children was tossed aside. Primarily by
people in the media that influenced the desire of scientists to pursue this
avenue of thought.
DR W: So Arthur, in summary, fascinating
new finding, confirmation that there's a bowel disease in children with autism,
with gastrointestinal symptoms .. and .. they have all the appearances of being
either new or a precursor of something like crohn's disease or
colitis.
Comments
GAPS and WAPF to the rescue!
Politically correct “nutrition”, as pushed by the USDA and CDC, is anything but.
"DR W: This is saying ..these are those that are part of the disease, these are the ones that are switched on .. these are the ones that may be helping to drive the disease process .. and .. these are the ones turned off .. maybe protective for example.
DR K: Yes, yes. The paper should not be interpreted as meaning that autism is genetic."
What has been done with the hundreds of millions, if not billions, in "genetic autism research" is nothing other than criminal fraud at the highest political levels.
The genome you were given at birth is not the genome that directs your body to act. Your birth genome must be EXPRESSED first. ENVIRONMENTAL factors like mercury affect this gene expression. There is a whole new science "The Science of Epigenetics" that explains all this.
"I want the frauds and criminals who perpetrated this mass atrocity jailed, humiliated, bankrupted."
Yes the more you understand about the roots of autism and the ASDs the madder you get.
However the damage HHS et al is doing to us is at least two orders of magnitude greater than the neurodegenerative trauma and death it brings us. HHS et al are politically blessed at the highest political levels, far above the executive, and given permission to inflict this damage. Bringing this mess to justice is probably an impossible dream; I will settle for stopping autism and the ASDs being inflicted on our kids and us.
ONLY WE can stop autism and we do not need HHS and the pack of political criminals to do this. Stopping all "vaccination" is a great start. Please tell your friends, neighbors and pregnant women how to stop autism.
The validation is nice but I want blood (metaphoriclly speaking). I want the frauds and criminals who perpetrated this mass atrocity jailed, humiliated, bankrupted. I want the pharmaceutical corporations responsible bled white. Unless this hapens this whole cenario will happen again by some other means (and, BTW, IS happening with psychoactive drugs).
fascinating article. When I had my colonoscopy done in 2011 with dr Bui at harbor city Kaiser I had been found to have chronic "non specific ilietis" as well as lymphoid eggrigantes. Doctor quickly blamed this bowel inflamation on neurofibromatosis which I have, as well as saying I may have a rare hereditary colon cancer disease. Now I know my autism symptoms as a child were not caused by my nf.
John Stone has succeeded in getting the article abstract into the BMJ 'Rapid Responses' section of the Godlee, Marcovitch and Smith editorial:-
“Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent” http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452/rr/635200
This is so interesting! My 7 year old son has just been referred for ASD testing. He is very high-functioning, and our first born, so I think many signs passed us by earlier. Not to mention, his younger brother was born when he was only 22 months old! He had a very sensitive stomach as a baby/toddler. Awful diarrhea, which would sometimes leave a bright red rash, although otherwise his health and growth were good. I asked his pedi about it and was told it was "toddler diarrhea." We never really had a better explanation for it, and eventually his bowels seemed to normalize, but he still has a sensitive stomach and is a picky eater. Just one more sign that was missed - I guess I shouldn't beat myself up too bad about it. Just wish we could have gotten him help earlier. :(
my autistic child has polyps all through the large intestinal tract, and inflamation of the upper tract per biopsy as well...too bad science ridicules people who are doing the most for our kids
Great news! I wished this news had been common knowledge when my son was still alive. He might have been helped; it would have lent a lot more credibility to my claim that Erik was in pain. He used to have episodes where he would have a really contorted face. He didn't make a sound. But if he had had a voice he would have screamed. I always called it the silent scream. He usually was constipated. But no one believed there was anything wrong with his intestines. He even was tested (biopsied) for celiac disease-and nothing was found.
He supposedly died of pneumonia. But he had no fever. They attributed his pneumonia to cytokines. They also hypothecized that he might have died of kidney failure.
To our surprise, after he died, the pathology report said essentially that he had major intestinal disease. We'll never know exactly what that was. But we do know that our observations were correct. Gastroenteologists wouldn't touch Erik with a ten foort pole. One of these people (doctors?) refused to give us a follow-up appointment after he had discovered severe vitamin D deficiency and zinc deficiency that required zinc supplementation 20 times the allowable daily dose.
I haven't seen one report of this news in the UK press to date. I sent it to the ed of a popular daily. Again not holding my breath. Why aren't they reporting it at all????
We cannot get covered help for our children's GI issues (or mitochondrial issues for that matter). Then the waiting list for the few clinics which will even investigate and which insurance will cover is years-long at this point. But once in, specialists will often refuse to report abnormalities in the ileum even when something is found. Some won't even scope that area-- where so many GI specialists fear to tread.
This is clearly political and I hope this paper pushes the medical field to putting aside politics and treating these medical conditions.
Last September, the local newspaper reported that Micah Mazurek had recently published the first-of-its-kind study, proving that many autistic children suffered from gastrointestinal disease. I wrote saying that Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues had actually been the first to study this, coining the term autistic enterocolitis to describe it, but that, according to the Wikipedia article on that topic, most scientists and researchers did not believe that any such condition really existed, that it had just been invented by Drs. Wakefield et al.
It's hilarious, if you think about it, how they're trying to regroup and save face. They have decided it's fruitless to try to continue denying the reality of bowel disease occurring so frequently in autistic children, there are just too many thousands to continue denying it with a straight face. And so they're permitting their in-house researchers to claim the credit for "discovering" its existence.
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GAPS and WAPF to the rescue!
Politically correct “nutrition”, as pushed by the USDA and CDC, is anything but.
Posted by: madness | June 09, 2021 at 07:22 PM
What is the cure? Need to help my 5 month old grandson. He vomits up all his breast milk, every feeding. There must be herbs that can help.
Posted by: Candid | June 26, 2017 at 07:28 PM
I also have a child with Downs Syndrome and ASD and she has been diagnosed with non specific colitis but the meds given are for the treatment of IBD.
Posted by: sharron martin | April 08, 2015 at 03:54 PM
"DR W: This is saying ..these are those that are part of the disease, these are the ones that are switched on .. these are the ones that may be helping to drive the disease process .. and .. these are the ones turned off .. maybe protective for example.
DR K: Yes, yes. The paper should not be interpreted as meaning that autism is genetic."
What has been done with the hundreds of millions, if not billions, in "genetic autism research" is nothing other than criminal fraud at the highest political levels.
The genome you were given at birth is not the genome that directs your body to act. Your birth genome must be EXPRESSED first. ENVIRONMENTAL factors like mercury affect this gene expression. There is a whole new science "The Science of Epigenetics" that explains all this.
CDC KNOWS all about Epigenetics.
http://healthyprotocols.com/epigenetics.htm
Posted by: Lou | March 15, 2013 at 04:03 PM
"I want the frauds and criminals who perpetrated this mass atrocity jailed, humiliated, bankrupted."
Yes the more you understand about the roots of autism and the ASDs the madder you get.
However the damage HHS et al is doing to us is at least two orders of magnitude greater than the neurodegenerative trauma and death it brings us. HHS et al are politically blessed at the highest political levels, far above the executive, and given permission to inflict this damage. Bringing this mess to justice is probably an impossible dream; I will settle for stopping autism and the ASDs being inflicted on our kids and us.
ONLY WE can stop autism and we do not need HHS and the pack of political criminals to do this. Stopping all "vaccination" is a great start. Please tell your friends, neighbors and pregnant women how to stop autism.
Posted by: Lou | March 15, 2013 at 02:49 PM
The validation is nice but I want blood (metaphoriclly speaking). I want the frauds and criminals who perpetrated this mass atrocity jailed, humiliated, bankrupted. I want the pharmaceutical corporations responsible bled white. Unless this hapens this whole cenario will happen again by some other means (and, BTW, IS happening with psychoactive drugs).
Posted by: Theodore Van Oosbree | March 12, 2013 at 01:28 PM
"Recovering Autism, ADHD, & Special Needs," covers some super easy things to try at home for the bowel issue. It is free today on kindle.http://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Autism-Special-Needs-ebook/dp/B00BCSIIT4/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1363057331&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=recovering+autism%2C+adhd+%26+Special+needs
Posted by: Shell Tzorfas | March 12, 2013 at 12:11 PM
fascinating article. When I had my colonoscopy done in 2011 with dr Bui at harbor city Kaiser I had been found to have chronic "non specific ilietis" as well as lymphoid eggrigantes. Doctor quickly blamed this bowel inflamation on neurofibromatosis which I have, as well as saying I may have a rare hereditary colon cancer disease. Now I know my autism symptoms as a child were not caused by my nf.
Posted by: W Ford | March 12, 2013 at 12:00 PM
John Stone has succeeded in getting the article abstract into the BMJ 'Rapid Responses' section of the Godlee, Marcovitch and Smith editorial:-
“Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent”
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452/rr/635200
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 12, 2013 at 05:10 AM
This is so interesting! My 7 year old son has just been referred for ASD testing. He is very high-functioning, and our first born, so I think many signs passed us by earlier. Not to mention, his younger brother was born when he was only 22 months old! He had a very sensitive stomach as a baby/toddler. Awful diarrhea, which would sometimes leave a bright red rash, although otherwise his health and growth were good. I asked his pedi about it and was told it was "toddler diarrhea." We never really had a better explanation for it, and eventually his bowels seemed to normalize, but he still has a sensitive stomach and is a picky eater. Just one more sign that was missed - I guess I shouldn't beat myself up too bad about it. Just wish we could have gotten him help earlier. :(
Posted by: Jennifer | March 12, 2013 at 01:42 AM
my autistic child has polyps all through the large intestinal tract, and inflamation of the upper tract per biopsy as well...too bad science ridicules people who are doing the most for our kids
Posted by: moon batchelder | March 11, 2013 at 06:22 PM
Great news! I wished this news had been common knowledge when my son was still alive. He might have been helped; it would have lent a lot more credibility to my claim that Erik was in pain. He used to have episodes where he would have a really contorted face. He didn't make a sound. But if he had had a voice he would have screamed. I always called it the silent scream. He usually was constipated. But no one believed there was anything wrong with his intestines. He even was tested (biopsied) for celiac disease-and nothing was found.
He supposedly died of pneumonia. But he had no fever. They attributed his pneumonia to cytokines. They also hypothecized that he might have died of kidney failure.
To our surprise, after he died, the pathology report said essentially that he had major intestinal disease. We'll never know exactly what that was. But we do know that our observations were correct. Gastroenteologists wouldn't touch Erik with a ten foort pole. One of these people (doctors?) refused to give us a follow-up appointment after he had discovered severe vitamin D deficiency and zinc deficiency that required zinc supplementation 20 times the allowable daily dose.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | March 11, 2013 at 05:17 PM
I haven't seen one report of this news in the UK press to date. I sent it to the ed of a popular daily. Again not holding my breath. Why aren't they reporting it at all????
Posted by: Patricia | March 11, 2013 at 04:19 PM
We cannot get covered help for our children's GI issues (or mitochondrial issues for that matter). Then the waiting list for the few clinics which will even investigate and which insurance will cover is years-long at this point. But once in, specialists will often refuse to report abnormalities in the ileum even when something is found. Some won't even scope that area-- where so many GI specialists fear to tread.
This is clearly political and I hope this paper pushes the medical field to putting aside politics and treating these medical conditions.
Posted by: Dying on the vine | March 11, 2013 at 03:35 PM
Last September, the local newspaper reported that Micah Mazurek had recently published the first-of-its-kind study, proving that many autistic children suffered from gastrointestinal disease. I wrote saying that Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues had actually been the first to study this, coining the term autistic enterocolitis to describe it, but that, according to the Wikipedia article on that topic, most scientists and researchers did not believe that any such condition really existed, that it had just been invented by Drs. Wakefield et al.
It's hilarious, if you think about it, how they're trying to regroup and save face. They have decided it's fruitless to try to continue denying the reality of bowel disease occurring so frequently in autistic children, there are just too many thousands to continue denying it with a straight face. And so they're permitting their in-house researchers to claim the credit for "discovering" its existence.
Posted by: cia parker | March 11, 2013 at 10:32 AM
What great news know which one of the press in Britain will pick this up im not holding my breath , lets see
Posted by: Debra | March 11, 2013 at 08:30 AM