San Francisco Chronicle, 14/05/2003

Autism cases in California nearly doubled over the past four years to more than 20,000 - a phenomenon whose cause may be difficult to pinpoint because it is not related to population increases or the way the disorder is diagnosed, a state study said on May 13.

The study, conducted by the California Department of Developmental Services, tracked the number of autism cases referred to 21 regional centers where patients and their families receive government-funded services. 

The report showed that the agency's caseload increased by 97 per cent - from 10,360 in December 1998 to 20,337 four years later. 

Once a rare disorder, autism was now more prevalent than childhood cancer, diabetes and Down syndrome, said the study's author, Dr Ron Huff, senior psychologist at the department and lead author of both reports.The spectacular rate of increase for autism dwarfed rises of 35 per cent to 49 per cent for new cases of mental retardation, cerebral palsy and epilepsy in California, said Dr Huff.  "We are convinced that this is for real. It has to be taken seriously." 

He added: "We were hoping and praying it would go down. But it's accelerating slightly. Everything we see now says we might as well assume that it will continue. It would be risky not to assume that." 

Dr Huff's study was a follow-up to an earlier report ordered by California lawmakers which had shown a 273 per cent rise in autism cases statewide between 1987 to 1998. 

"All through the 1970s to the mid-1980s, we were looking at a couple of hundred (autistic) kids each year," Dr Huff said. "Over the next decade, we were looking at thousands of new cases each year. Parents were reporting anecdotally that there were a lot more of these kids out there that anyone believed." 

MELBOURNE, Australia: A new trial at the Royal Children's Hospital here hopes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the anti-depressant Zoloft - which can help to control obsessive-compulsive disorders in adults - in treating Asperger's syndrome.

Simon Dafter, who has Asperger's, has his sights set on becoming a policeman, or perhaps building a town. When he was about three, his mother, Trisha, noticed a sudden, distinct change in his personality. "He'd been a lovely, placid little boy and he just started getting stubborn," she said.

Children with Asperger's, like Simon, are often intellectually very bright, but have difficulty seeing how certain behaviour affects other people, and they tend to have a narrow set of interests.

Dr John Mathai, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who is directing the new trial at the Royal Children's Hospital, said he hoped Zoloft would help control repetitive and aggressive behaviour. The hospital already has 10 children on the trial, but hopes to recruit up to 60 children, aged seven to 15. Half will be given the drug and the other half will not.

"What we expect to see is that the children on the active drug ... will be improving their social relationships and be more manageable," Dr Mathai said.

It is believed about one in 500 children has Asperger's syndrome. Simon is not on the trial but has been taking another anti-depressant for two years, which, his mother said, had had a positive effect. "He's a lot calmer, you can reason with him, he's not as aggressive."

"Much less aggressive," agreed Simon. Now he's doing more school work, instead of tearing up pages, as he once did.

Simon, too, is a fan of the new medication. "They work really well, make me feel much better, more co-operative, more agreeable," he said.

Simon's real passion is science - last year he gained a high distinction in a national science competition. So when offered the chance of a tour of the labs at the hospital, he wasn't about to knock it back. "Yes!" he said excitedly. "You won't be able to stop me!"

NEW YORK, USA: Children with autism often have difficulty understanding spoken language, and new research released on April 14 may help explain why. 

Patterns of brain activity in autistic children as they listen to sounds reveal that they do indeed hear and listen to language, but fail to pay attention to the sounds the words make. In contrast, brain scans showed that children with autism appeared to both hear and pay attention to musical tones of a similar complexity to language. 

These results contradict previous theories which suggested that children with autism do not learn language because they are unable to take in and process complex sounds. 

All of the children included in the study were between the ages of 6 and 12 and were considered to be high functioning, meaning that they had an IQ above 70 and could speak some words. 

But without attention to the sounds words make, learning fully to speak and understand language is impossible, the study author, Dr Rita Ceponiene of the University of California at San Diego, told Reuters Health. "Attending to something is a necessary prerequisite for learning," she said. 

Dr Ceponiene said that the findings could also one day help researchers identify infants with autism earlier, and children who were diagnosed earlier with the condition often fared better. 

However, she cautioned that much more work was needed before researchers could provide parents with new tools to help their children with autism to learn language. "This is a step. It's quite an informative step. But, unfortunately, it's still far from giving something that's applicable on the everyday basis to these parents," Dr Ceponiene said. 

BETHESDA, Maryland, USA: Mercury in some vaccines given to babies may be a contributory cause of autism and heart disease, new research here claims.

The study, by Dr Mark Geier, a physician with a PhD in genetics, and David Geier, a graduate student at the National Institutes of Health, who are both consultants in genetics based in Bethesda, Maryland, found that children who had received vaccines containing a preservative called thimerosal, which is almost 50 per cent mercury, were more than twice as likely to develop autism than children who did not.

Mercury, which is known to be neurotoxic, is being phased out of vaccines in America and Europe after scientists in the United States found the amount in vaccines exceeded federal safety limits.

The new study, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, supports unpublished research carried out by the American Centres for Disease Control (CDC) in 2000. This showed an increased relative risk of autism of 2.48 for children who had received 75 micrograms of mercury, the amount in the British schedule.

The incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders and heart disease following the administration of Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (DTP) vaccines containing mercury compared with non-mercury vaccines was based on nationwide data in the United States.

The researchers claim they have produced "the first epidemiological evidence showing a direct association between thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders."

Thimerosal is used in some vaccines to prevent bacterial infection. Mercury is not present in the triple measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR).

The Phoenix Business Journal, 02/04/2003

The Arizona Diamondbacks Charities gave US$200,000 to the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center(SAARC) at a fund-raising breakfast on April 2. 

When Rich Dozer, president of the baseball team, walked into the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa for the fundraiser, he was prepared to give $100,000. He already had the cheque written out, speech in hand. By the end of the event, attended by 1,000 business and community leaders, Dozer said he was "so moved" that he wrote out another $100,000 cheque, doubling the donation.

Called the Grand Slam Award Grant, the donation was the first of its kind given by the Arizona Diamondbacks Charities. 

The SARRC was selected from more than 80 non-profit-making organisations applying for the Grand Slam grant. The money will be used to develop new Arizona training camps for exceptional children, Dozer told the crowd, which included Arizona's state governor, Janet Napolitano, and the Mayor of Phoenix, Skip Rimsza. 

At the Diamondbacks' third game of the season against the Los Angeles Dodgers on the night of April 2, all the D-Backs players were to wear a special hat with the autism symbol, a purple ribbon with a piece of a puzzle, depicting the missing piece of information to find a cure for autism. Dozer told the group he would be auctioning the hats after the game to raise even more money for the autism group. 

Greg Swindell, a former pitcher for the Diamondbacks, gave a tearful testimonial about his son Dawson, who was diagnosed with autism when he was 18 months old. Pitcher Greg Swindell was happy to hear that. He spoke at the breakfast about his two-year-old son, Dawson, who was diagnosed with autism six months ago.

"As you know," Swindell said, stopping to control his quavering voice, "it (autism) has hit home with us."

He thanked friends for supporting his family and Dawson, "the loving boy that he is."

Swindell also thanked his wife, Sarah. "If you could see the smile that he has when she walks in the room, I think everyone would write a cheque for $100,000," Swindell said.

The Swindell's fourth child and first boy, Dawson was developing normally. But at 15 months, "he stopped using his words" and began flapping his hands, a repetitive movement often found in autistic children.  By 18 months, Dawson was diagnosed as moderately to severely retarded and the doctor explained he had autism.

"No one can ever prepare you to hear those words," said Swindell's wife, Sarah. "I wanted it to go away. I wanted it to be a mistake."

She said that, before the diagnosis, she often wondered what her son would grow up to become - whether he would be an athlete like his dad or a doctor. But now that Dawson is "in a world of his own," all her dreams for him are shattered. "No one can ever prepare you to hear those words that your child's life is over," she said. 

The Autism Center's founder and president, Denise Resnik, told a similar story about her son, Matthew, 11. Explaining that her family's experience with autism spanned a decade, Resnik said she had been resigned to the fact that autism was "an intractable disorder that will be with us forever."